Do I need 200mbs?

Relentless81

Relentless81

Relentless81

Soldato
Joined
18 May 2010
Posts
12,850
Hi,

I currently have Virgin 200 and the price has crept up to £46 a month.

I've been thinking, the most work it gets put through is when the Mrs is streaming shows and I'm gaming on BF1 for example, do I really need 200mbs?

I'm considering halving it to 100 and saving the £20 a month but will BF1 suddenly become a laggy mess as soon as the Mrs fires up her favorite shows?

We use PowerLine adapters for the TV downstairs and it can only pull 40mbs anyway which is perfect for streaming 1080p but will the remaining amount be enough for me to game with no adverse effects? Its always been fine with 200

Thanks
 
You'd likely be fine on far, far lower than 100mbps. You should, however, configure quality of service on your router to give your gaming traffic a higher priority over others.

I don't know what streaming services you use, but Netflix requires a maximum of 25mbps, and games such as BF1 use very little, less than 100kbps.
 
To the best of my knowledge games are more dependent on latency than bandwidth so no halving to 100Mbit won't make it necessarily a worse experience. You've already know that streaming even 4K isn't going to max out your power line adapters so only you know how much extra bandwidth you need and what it's worth to you but I don't think gaming is going to need it except for downlanding the games quicker. Cloud backup/restore benefits greatly from bandwidth and obviously anything else involving lots of downloading, but if you're not grabbing Linux ISOs off newsgroups every night then I think the two of you will be just fine with 100Mbit.
 
Can you get FTTC? That should give you some alternative pricing options to think of as well once you've established that you don't need 200Mbps.

100Mbps will be more than sufficient, I probably wouldn't drop to 50Mbps just because of the upload performance.
 
Problem with VM is their upload speeds.

I have 200MB just to get a half decent upload speed.

With a decent upload 9 times out of 10 you will be picked as host in P2P games. So you have zero lag.
 
Not to fussed on upload as dont play P2P that often

I didnt think of FTTC, it will give me more leverage on pricing

Thanks for the help, I think the main thing is, I'm paying for something I dont actually need so I am going to drop it to 100 or go with a cheaper alternative
 
Isn't the 200MBps one the one without any traffic shaping and best ping times (from VM anyway)? It might suffer on the lower packages.

Daaaavvveee said:
I currently have 330, dont think i need it, but BT offer it for £30 a month, would be rude not to! Thats FTTP :)
Click to expand...

How do you get that? I'm on FTTP but they said they don't do any discounts on the higher FTTP products. Currently paying £22.50 for the 76MB service (signed up for 2 years, been with them for long anyway). 220MBps would be £40, and 330 would be £50. :(
 
Relentless81 said:
Not to fussed on upload as dont play P2P that often

I didnt think of FTTC, it will give me more leverage on pricing

Thanks for the help, I think the main thing is, I'm paying for something I dont actually need so I am going to drop it to 100 or go with a cheaper alternative
Click to expand...

I'm considering the same move. It'd be great if you could update this thread once you've done it with what you ended up on and if you see a difference, thanks.
 
I pay £36 for 200mb, phone and basic TV (Tivo), I just called them up and threaten to leave, got a few months left on this and we will do the dance again.
 
Voicon said:
I pay £36 for 200mb, phone and basic TV (Tivo), I just called them up and threaten to leave, got a few months left on this and we will do the dance again.
Click to expand...

There's so much discrepancy in Virgin's contracts. I pay £50 for 80MB, Unlimited phone and basic TiVo.

The other day I called to ask if I can send the TiVo box back as I don't watch it and it makes a horrible noise and they said if I do that I will have to start paying £67 per month for a one off collection.

So if you do the maths and apply some logic, I'm being credited £17 per month to store old Virgin Equipment in my house.

Absolutely bizarre and certainly retarded company. I'm sure their internal systems and employees are just as broken as their TiVo boxes and shoddily run broadband service.
 
asim18 said:
There's so much discrepancy in Virgin's contracts. I pay £50 for 80MB, Unlimited phone and basic TiVo.

The other day I called to ask if I can send the TiVo box back as I don't watch it and it makes a horrible noise and they said if I do that I will have to start paying £67 per month for a one off collection.

So if you do the maths and apply some logic, I'm being credited £17 per month to store old Virgin Equipment in my house.

Absolutely bizarre and certainly retarded company. I'm sure their internal systems and employees are just as broken as their TiVo boxes and shoddily run broadband service.
Click to expand...

I obviously have a different experience to you, my service from virgin has been excellent, I agreed a £40 a month deal at first and a few days later they called back and said because you've been with us so long it's £36, I was surprised :)
 
I'm out of contract so can cancel or change, I'm pretty set on halving my internet connection just based on the fact that I feel like I'm paying for something we are not fully utilising and some of the comments back that up

Happy to update the thread with my experience, hopefully its a case of £20 better off in my pocket than Virgin's and not regret the change but we'll see
 
Relentless81 said:
I'm out of contract so can cancel or change, I'm pretty set on halving my internet connection just based on the fact that I feel like I'm paying for something we are not fully utilising and some of the comments back that up

Happy to update the thread with my experience, hopefully its a case of £20 better off in my pocket than Virgin's and not regret the change but we'll see
Click to expand...

From what you mentioned 100mb will be fine, don't accept the standard price, threaten to cancel to get a better deal.
 
Voicon said:
I obviously have a different experience to you, my service from virgin has been excellent, I agreed a £40 a month deal at first and a few days later they called back and said because you've been with us so long it's £36, I was surprised :)
Click to expand...

Haha they are taking the ****! :p

The £50 I currently pay was actually meant to be somewhere around £42, but they sent me a contract for £55, then I complained and got them to send a contract out for the agreed £42, they said no problem the £55 was an error, but they didn't even bother sending the second contract and I'm still paying £50.

Their systems are definitely broken. I think I'm some people end up paying for other people's discounts. :/
 
Streaming 1080p you want 20Mb max.
Streaming 4k probably 60Mb

Upload is the thing you want most, 5Mb would be nice on all connections, more if you actually upload "real" stuff like photos and videos etc.
 
I've always had the fastest internet connection I can get. I downgraded from 100mb to 50mb last year as far as I'm concerned 50mb is now quick enough for everything I do.
 
I have a ~50Mbps FTTC and if I could get 300Mbps FTTP tomorrow I would probably do it, monitor my actual usage over the minimum contract period, and most likely downgrade at the end of it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom