Living with 35Mbps Internet

MG42Maniac

MG42Maniac

MG42Maniac

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Joined
28 Jan 2005
Posts
1,842
Location
Lymington
Hi All,

My partner and I are looking at houses that seem to in areas where the fastest internet speed available is around 35Mbps down and 5Mbps up. Now, this may sound like a stupid question, but how painful is 35Mbps in 2018? We've been in a VM area for years and years so the last time I had a speed this slow was probably 7/8 years ago. Now 7/8 years ago, 4K wasn't a thing and game patches were not 10GB. We currently have 300Mbps. Times have moved on and we stream a lot of 4K content and generally have a lot of internet connected devices that probably suck a small amount of bandwidth. My main worry is that Netflix /Amazon will constantly buffer if we are doing anything else that uses bandwidth and just general "slowness" of surfing. The slow download speed of ~4MB/s I could learn to live with as I would just download large files overnight.

I appreciate this post comes across as "first world issues" :p but I think we have taken a high speed internet connection for granted and the thought of having to wait ages for things to buffer/download is annoying but I am wondering how bad it will actually be?
 
Netflix recommendation for 4k streaming is 25mbps which includes some headroom so you'll be fine.
 
I get 38mb down/7mb up average now, and it's been completely fine for 4K streaming with bandwidth to spare.

This is considered slow now :p? Come on, I'm going to be stuck with this for years since Virgin has no plans to cable up my part of the street (even though both directions a couple of minutes away have been for years) and I'm way too far from the cabinet for g.fast. And even at work, a lot of our branches in Central London don't even have FTTC due to being exchange direct lines/too expensive to work on.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone, just to reiterate, I am aware it's a first world issue and many people are lucky if they get 4Mbps :p

It's just getting used to how much you can do on a line without having problems. As an example, if my partner is streaming Netflix 4K, then I know I can also stream 4K upstairs and download a large file and there will be no buffering or interruptions. We don't even think about how much bandwidth any action is using. With a significantly slower speed, I am wondering if you need to be a bit more "respectful" of how much bandwidth you are using. It's something I kinda have no concept of so just looking at people's experiences.
 
Yeah barely maintaining 30mb over degraded old noisy POTS lines is absolutely no match for a properly running DOCSIS connection. Heck I'd take a 1 channel DOCSIS connection over any POTS, and virgin are on 8 channels right now I believe.

Say no to POTS and find another house. Fed up of openreach continuing to milk decades old technology with no viable future, all while line rental charges are going through the roof. Lol.
 
Unless you're streaming multiple 4K sources routinely or have a need to download every Linux ISO constantly off newsgroups I think you'll be fine most of the time. I went from 78Mbps to 3Mbps out in the country side and I cope, although with hindsight it was a step too far which I've had to come up with some creative solutions to. For me personally I can probably do everything I want with 10Mbps today, but I don't have kids who my friends re-assure me can be a constant drain on bandwidth. They tend to stream 4K music videos on Youtube just to hear the music that they could just as easily do on the family Spotify account!
 
asim18 said:
Yeah barely maintaining 30mb over degraded old noisy POTS lines is absolutely no match for a properly running DOCSIS connection. Heck I'd take a 1 channel DOCSIS connection over any POTS, and virgin are on 8 channels right now I believe.

Say no to POTS and find another house. Fed up of openreach continuing to milk decades old technology with no viable future, all while line rental charges are going through the roof. Lol.
Click to expand...
The wholesale line rental charges from Openreach have actually been on a slight downward trend over the years so you can't blame Openreach. The line rental increases are purely down to ISP's leveraging them to make up for a shortfall in calls as more and more stop using landlines and to throw around hugely discounted broadband deals. Thankfully now prices quoted in advertising must be for both.
 
asim18 said:
Yeah barely maintaining 30mb over degraded old noisy POTS lines is absolutely no match for a properly running DOCSIS connection. Heck I'd take a 1 channel DOCSIS connection over any POTS, and virgin are on 8 channels right now I believe.

Say no to POTS and find another house. Fed up of openreach continuing to milk decades old technology with no viable future, all while line rental charges are going through the roof. Lol.
Click to expand...

Bit extreme. While I do agree DOCSIS is better, Virgin is still having issues where some areas are oversubscribed, so Openreach's network will offer lower latency and better consistent speeds.
 
What on earth do you think sending data over cable TV coax is if DSL is 'miking decades old technology'? They are both fudges that have been quite effectively used to push fast Internet connectivity over physical infrastructure that was never designed with it in mind.
 
Providing your not streaming two 4k video's at once it will be totally fine. BTW 1080p video uses around 3.5 mbps to put in perspective.

I would be more worried about the 5mbps upload if you work from home, or need to upload on regular basis.
 
You could set up bandwidth limiting for certain devices or use QoS on a router like the Unifi USG which will prioritise certain traffic like voip/streams. If you're really struggling and have the £ you could get a second vdsl connection put in and use a load balancing router to double your bandwidth.
 
LOL, first world problems. 35mbps is more than fine. I was happy on 22Mbps down ADSL, the current 40/10 fibre is more than fast enough for anything we can throw at it. Most 4k streaming services won't use more than 15Mbps, worst case.

300Mbps from Virgin is just e-peen if I'm honest. We run 4000+ users on the work network off a 300 down pipe at work without issue.
 
When at work my connection on 4G is 20-25Mbit down and 2Mbit up (though get some bursts of 30-35Mbit up) it would be perfectly liveable with for most uses even with some sharing though you might get some conflict if multiple users were trying to stream very high bitrate video, etc.
 
MagicBoy said:
300Mbps from Virgin is just e-peen if I'm honest.
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Yes, all fun and games till you decide you want to install a PC or console game at 9pm in the evening and have a play before bed... Oh wait... 30GB+ download... Good luck at 35Mbps in any reasonable time frame while the other half moans at you because their 4K stream has gone ****.

MagicBoy said:
We run 4000+ users on the work network off a 300 down pipe at work without issue.
Click to expand...

All those emails, and Betty in personnel searching for more funny cat gifs, oh the horror.

To the op, should it put you off buying a house? Depends how much you like the house or if you do not like it and just looking for a reason not to?

Bear in mind, the speed you have been quoted appears to be a "best scenario" unless you have asked existing owner?

35Mb is fine for single instance use for high bandwidth instances like 4K Streaming, but trying to stream two 4K streams at once and get your tablet online... another story perhaps..
 
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