How Much Internet Speed Should I Pay For

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Gaming

On re-reading this, I realize that I have not addressed online game playing. I don't do that, so I'm not really familiar with the requirements. I would expect that the biggest bandwidth requirement is in the download direction, not upload.

If someone wants to suggest one or more of the most bandwidth intensive games and their bandwidth requirements, at some point I will try to revise this WikiLearn page appropriately (or at least add a note or two).

Zoom and RCN's very low upload speeds

Note about Zoom and RCN's very low upload speeds:

Since the first version of this page, I learned two things:

• Zoom (I should have realized this if I had thought about it) is almost always the biggest user of upload bandwidth, and it uses quite a bit. Almost nothing else (well, except things like uploading a large file or picture) uses very much at all -- but if you tried to run a website on your home computer, that might use a lot more, but most ISPs will not let you do that, they want to charge you more for a higher upload speed specifically for a purpose like that).

• RCN's upload speed (limits) are a lot lower than I expected, iiuc, 20 Mbps for a 1 gig (1 Gbps) contract, and, iiuc, 10 Mbps for even their lowest tier of service (sometimes sold as 25 Mbps and sometimes sold as 50 Mbps -- I stopped using RCN maybe as many as 10 years ago, and I haven't tried to understand their current contract structure -- and, because RCN (now Astound) has "data centers" in many parts of the country, speeds and advertising terms may differ by geographic area).

Combining the two, the number of Zoom links is much lower than I originally stated -- I've now revised those numbers (somewhere below) but I haven't yet tried to revise this entire document to correctly integrate this information -- I did make a "quick and dirty" attempt to integrate it.

(/ end of Note about Zoom and RCNs very low upload speeds)

Introduction

I initially intended to paste this on a Nextdoor page in response to a thread on Internet costs, and then later add it to my wiki (Wikilearn) but it was apparently too long, so I'm putting it here. It is very much a first draft.

To explain a little more (a short explanation (see note at bottom, I have not proofread this, it was enough to write it for now):

Bandwidth Requirements

Let's start with how much bandwidth (speed) you need for various purposes:

• Zoom (from the Zoom support site):

"For high-quality video: 1.0 Mbps/600kbps (up/down) · For 720p HD video: 2.6Mbps/1.8Mbps (up/down) · For 1080p HD video: 3.8Mbps/3.0 ..."

• Streaming TV (from a Google search -- I'll add a reference later):

• • at 4K: 25 Mbps per TV
  • pre-4K TV (like 1080P): 5 Mbps per TV

• online gaming <later>

• VOIP: (from a Google search -- I'll add a reference later)

• • (at typical POTS quality): 64 kbps per VOIP phone

So, on a 1 Gbps connection (if it really gave you 1 Gbps but it almost certainly won't, I'll start explaining somewhere below -- it is somewhat complicated, but I think I can give you analogies that will help with understanding the general ideas).

What You Can Do With That Much Bandwidth

With those bandwidth requirements, and a 1 Gbps connection, you could have:

• 5 Zoom calls with HD (1080p) video going on at the same time (7 with 720p, or 20 with "high quality" video) ) This is limited by RCN's upload speed which is 20 Mbps on a 1 gig connection.

Note: Fortunately, even RCN's lowest tier (25 Mbps) has a 10 Mbps upload speed (iiuc), which means that you can do half those numbers, i.e., 2,3, and 10 on even the lowest RCN tier.

• 40 4k TV sets streaming video at the same time, or

• 200 HD (1080p) TV sets streaming video at the same time, or

• 16,000 VOIP phone calls going on at the same time, or

• online gaming <later>

• some combination of the above.

How Close Are You to that Usage?

I'll bet you're not anywhere close to that.

When You Pay for a 1 gig (1 Gbps) Connection, You Wont't Get It

Now there is more to the story -- when you pay for a 1 Gbps connection, you can't be sure of getting it all the time, or maybe even ever. I'll try to give a simplified explanation with a number of analogies.

Oh, first I'll mention one other thing, and then give an analogy for that...

(Always) Limited Speed vs. (Almost) Unlimited Data

The 1 Gbps that you pay for is the speed of the connection, not the amount of data you can download (or upload) over time.

(Aside: many Internet providers put no limit (again, simplified) on how much data you can download, but some put a limit on how much data you can download at the highest speed -- that happens a lot with cellphone plans -- they might put a 1 GB (gigabyte) limit on how much you can download at high speed (in, for example, a month) but if you exceed that, at least some (most) will let you continue to download but at a reduced speed (and some / most will give you an option to pay for more high speed data in that month).

It's a little bit like buying (or driving) a car -- maybe the speed limits force you to drive no more than 60 mph (miles per hour), but, in a simplified sense, you are not limited to driving 60 miles -- if you drive 2 hours, you can go 120 miles, if you drive 24 hours a day, you could go 1440 miles in a day, or if you drove 24/7 every day for a 30 day month, you could go 43,200 miles.

Likewise, the 1 Gbps is the speed of the connection (which as I have yet to explain, you won't always, or maybe ever, get). If you download at that speed for 1 second, you will get 1 billion bits (or about 100 million bytes (which is a better measure of data) in that one second. If you do that for two seconds, you'll get 2 billion bits (200 million bytes). If you do that for one minute, you'd get get 60 billion bits (6,000 million bytes (or 6 billion bytes)). If you do that 24/7 for a 30 day month, well you do the math (I might do it later and add it here).

Why You Won't Get 1 Gbps Even If You Pay for It

Now I'll try to explain (in an oversimplified way) some of the reasons that even if you pay for a 1 Gbps connection, you will rarely if ever get that -- I might start with several different analogies.

First of all, if you are streaming a digital program from, for example, Disney, I don't know where it originates from (and, aside, Disney almost surely has computers scattered around the country so that you might get it from any of those computers) but lets pretend it comes from California -- your Internet cable / connection does not have a direct connection to the Disney computer in California.

Highway Analogy

Think about if you'd want to drive to Disneyland in California -- you don't have a dedicated road that leads from your house to Disneyland -- you start out in your driveway and you may have to let some other cars pass before you can get out on the street, and then you work your way out of the neighborhood and get to a bigger but busier street, and you may have to wait again to get out on that street, and you have to comply with the speed limits, or, if the road is congested (a traffic jam) you may have to travel below the speed limit. And eventually you work your way on to a highway, and you may run into delays to get on the highway, and speed limits, and congestion as you drive on the highway.

As a first cut, that is a reasonable analogy to the Internet.

What You Really Pay For

As an inaccurate further analogy, when you pay for a 1 Gbps connection, you are paying to get out of your driveway at 1 Gbps. (As a slightly more accurate (but not perfect) analogy, it is more like you are paying to have your downloads leave the RCN facility on Rt. 248 at 1 Gbps (if they get there at that speed, which they won't), or have your uploads leave the RCN facility on Rt. 248 at maybe 20 Mbps (based on what I understand is the upload speed limit on their 1 Gbps tier) (if they get there at that speed, which they won't).)

Aggregation (Combination) of Signals / Cables to/from Individual Houses

In our neighborhood (specifically where Cindy lives) the Internet cables from 7 houses go to a junction box in Cindy's next door neighbor's yard (next to the electric transformer for those same 7 houses), and there those 7 cables are combined into one slightly larger / faster cable (or not, maybe just the same size cable and the place where the cables are combined is further upstream).

Almost certainly, that slightly larger cable can't handle the full speed stream from 7 houses (well, it might, but my real point is that as you go further and further upstream (toward the RCN facility north of us -- I forget exactly where it is, I think maybe it is along Route 248 (I've passed it many times, but it's been a while), the cables that go there cannot carry a full 1 Gbps stream to whatever number of houses might be served by that facility (is it 1000 houses, 10,000 houses? -- I don't know).

I won't go into it any deeper for now, but the entire Internet is like that, there are (potential) bottlenecks all over the place, and the people / companies that take care of the Internet should be, and, I hope, are paying attention / looking for those bottlenecks and trying to do something about them.

Electricity Analogy

One more analogy, back to Cindy's neighborhood -- think about those 7 houses, they may each have a 200 amp electrical service (which means each could support a load of 48 kws (kilowatts), so if all 7 houses would be using all that power at the same time, the transformer would have to be rated at 356 kws. I'll bet it is not, or maybe just by luck, ours might be big enough for 7 houses, but I know there are places where the transformers are not sized to handle the full maximum load from all the connected houses.

Think about your electric bill -- I use about 700 kwhrs / month, which means that, on average, I use 1 kw per hour, not 48.

Water Analogy

<later, but note that if everyone in your neighborhood turned on all their faucets, ran their dish and clothes washers, and flushed their toilets at the same time, the water mains in the streets would not be able to supply enough water>

Cable TV Systems Weren't Designed for Internet

Note: One way is that cable TV systems were designed primarily to download TV signals to homes, not to upload TV signals from homes.

Now the Internet service from RCN (and most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) that started out as Cable TV providers) was not designed for Internet so, again, without going into details, it is not ideal for Internet service.

A Potentially Better Design

(Something closer to ideal would be fiber optic with a pair of optical fibers extending from each house to the RCN facility on Rt. 248 (if that's where it is), but even that is sort of misleading -- fiber optic cables are difficult to splice, lose signal at each splice (and in the fiber), and probably need to be amplified to make it all the way to that RCN facility. Smart (economical) network design would probably mean that fibers from several houses are integrated into fewer fibers at most or not all of those amplifiers (or even more places than just where amplifiers are required).

Bottlenecks Everywhere, Not Just in Your Neighborhood

Up to now, I might have given you the impression that all the bottlenecks are in your local neighborhood, but, just like in a highway system, bottlenecks can be anywhere. On that 3000 mile drive from your house to Disneyland, you might run into several bottlenecks along the way. You might run into accidents, roads under construction, you might pass too close to a big city (Chicago?), and even worse it might be rush hour.

And, in the end, Disneyland might not be big enough for everyone in the country to visit on the same day, just like Disney's computers might not be able to stream different programs (at slightly different times) if everyone in the country is trying to stream something from Disney at the same time. (Having multiple computers all over the country is one approach to trying to solve that problem, sort of like having Disneyland and Disneyworld so not everyone is trying to get to Disneyland at the same time.)

(There are other techniques available or being developed to deal with those bottlenecks, one is (iirc) named multicasting -- they send the same signal to multiple houses at the same time, which is helpful in one way, but means each house has less control over starting and stopping (pausing) the video for snack breaks or whatever.)

Paying for Higher Bandwidth Doesn't Correct the Bottlenecks Elsewhere in the Internet

Ok, here is one more important thing that I haven't tried to explain yet.

I hope I've given you enough to understand that there are reasons why if you pay for 1 Gbps you probably won't get it (and, in any case, unless you are watching 40 4K TV programs at the same time, you don't need it), but here is the other important thing:

How to say this clearly? -- the bottlenecks that exist to keep you from getting 1 Gbps are the same at other speeds.

For example, if you pay for 1 Gbps but only get maybe 100 Mbps, then if you pay for 500 Mbps, you will still get that same 100 Mbps, or if you pay for 250 Mbps, you will still get that same 100 Mbps, and so on. And, if you only need 50 Mbps, there is no point in paying for anything more than that (and, you won't get it, even if you pay for it).

My guess is that Cindy can get away with RCN's lowest tier of service, which is (iirc) 25 Mbps down (and 10 Mbps up, iiuc). If she is worried, she could reduce the tier one step at a time, try it for a month (or whatever), and if still no problems (see below), reduce it again.

"No problems" is sort of misleading -- even at the lowest tier of service, things can happen that will cause problems -- a cable breaks somewhere (a car runs into a telephone pole -- in our neighborhood, the cables are buried, but when they get out of our neighborhood, they are carried on telephone / electric poles), or an Ethernet or fiber optic switch somewhere breaks down, or a computer breaks down. My point is, paying for a 1 Gbps link is not going to prevent those types of problems. (Or periods when everyone tries to stream the Superbowl (or Olympics) at the same time.)

Closing (Not Really a Summary -- maybe later)

I'm quitting for now. I haven't (and won't) proofread this before posting on WikiLearn. Eventually I'd like to proofread and then revise this, possibly with more analogies, explanations, and source citations.

Have fun!

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• () RandyKramer - 2022-02-18
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