Just got fiber internet - quite a difference

I went from 3.5 MB/s to around 70 MB/s at the beginning of last year and I still get excited when I download a large file at how much faster it is. I remember downloading Bioshock Infinite ~5 years ago. It took me two days. And I'm not rounding up. Literally 48 or so hours.

I don't have the option for fibre in my area. I could get much faster cable internet than I have, though.
 
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Yeah, I think if you're in a cable area, that also has the potential to carry very high speeds.
 
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Ripper said:
Ah, now that's me getting it muddled - I actually meant gigaBYTE connections are in cities now - actual 1000MB/s stuff. You need a full end-to-end fibre for that though, so you have to wait for them the replace the phone lines on your street.
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Are those actually available to residential customers though, or is that just for businesses? I've never heard of anything that fast. I cringe to think of what it must cost.
 
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Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm not thinking of hardcore business leased lines and such. Here's one over here - 45 quid a month. The catch is that you have to live in one of the lucky areas. As I understand it, the ISPs can actually cope quite well with the speeds - the technical problem is the last leg of old copper wire that most people still rely on.
 
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JDR13 said:
Nice. We have Century Link over here but not at those speeds. I'm still using Comcast because they have the fastest connection in my area even though I despise them.

Have you downloaded any games yet? I'm curious what you'll get in MB/s.
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Pladio said:
Are you connected via wifi ?
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No, ethernet cable.
 
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JDR13 said:
Are those actually available to residential customers though, or is that just for businesses? I've never heard of anything that fast. I cringe to think of what it must cost.
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…although… I could be getting my wires crossed. I was given to understand that this is what 1GBps services were offering. I know 5G can potentially go up to that speed. But I haven't actually confirmed that with anybody using it. Perhaps it's just marketing fluff that really means 1 gigabit speeds.
 
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Ripper said:
Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm not thinking of hardcore business leased lines and such. Here's one over here - 45 quid a month. The catch is that you have to live in one of the lucky areas. As I understand it, the ISPs can actually cope quite well with the speeds - the technical problem is the last leg of old copper wire that most people still rely on.
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Ripper, I think you're getting double-confused :D

Those are showing 1Gb as fastest speeds.
 
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Yeah, don’t mind me – I got into the wine crate again. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes.
 
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My first modem, back in the late 80's was a 2400 bps thingy, actually pretty fast at the time. Downloading a 20 Gb game, which now takes me around 6 minutes, would take more than a year back then (the time to swap 100+ 200Mb disks not included)

a pibbur who observes that at least something is improving.

PS. It would also be hideously expensive, since using the phone line, I paid by the minute. And the wife might get just a little bit pissed, not being able to call her mother for a year. DS.
 
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Some years ago, at a very informal Linux meeting in Bergen, they implemented a pigeon internet protocol, which involved printing out ping requests and sticking it to 9 pigeons which then (mostly) flew home, over a 5 km distance. Packets where then transferred into receiving computer using OCR. Response time varied from 50 minutes to 2 hours. At least for some pigeons this was due to noise, in the form of nearby, not participating in the experiment, pigeons. Packet loss was 50%.

Read more about it here: https://www.cnet.com/news/pigeon-powered-internet-takes-flight/.

an implementation of pibbur network protocol, which would probably have performed better.
 
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Yeah well I refuse to pay $200 a month plus another $75 in taxes to Comcast. Sure I'd love the GigaBIT Fiber package, but the 300MB $75 package works fine for me.

My downloads go from 10MB to 40MB a second at peak times.
 
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I live in Brighton and here we have access to a "modest" 500mbps for a little more than £45 a month with Virgin Business. It's sketchy sometimes, especially in evenings at prime time, but you can average 40-50MB/s downloads regularly if you choose an early time to download big files, which makes getting any new games you want pretty trivial. Not the best deal, not the worst. But considering how expensive the UK is in general, always feel like I have to be happy about my internet connection. :)
 
I live in rented apartment about four years ago they upgraded the connections in all of their houses so since then I have had a Gb connection for about 15 $ a month
 
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The maximum we can get where we live is 500mbit/s. At least with our provider. We have selected on the provider first and made a choice for the provider that has privacy, security and freedom of internet not as a goal but as a way to do business.
That limits the number of providers to just one, so we went with that :)
 
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Nereida said:
I live in Brighton and here we have access to a "modest" 500mbps for a little more than £45 a month with Virgin Business. It's sketchy sometimes, especially in evenings at prime time, but you can average 40-50MB/s downloads regularly if you choose an early time to download big files, which makes getting any new games you want pretty trivial. Not the best deal, not the worst. But considering how expensive the UK is in general, always feel like I have to be happy about my internet connection. :)
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That's a really good deal. Does virgin business do home Internet then?
 
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Couchpotato said:
Yeah well I refuse to pay $200 a month plus another $75 in taxes to Comcast. Sure I'd love the GigaBIT Fiber package, but the 300MB $75 package works fine for me.

My downloads go from 10MB to 40MB a second at peak times.
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Not sure where you live but that’s outrageous. I have gigabit from comcast for 99/mo. In my area.

They do soak me for another 50 to get unlimited data. Don’t let me get started on data caps.:mad:
 
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Imo. said:
Not sure where you live but that’s outrageous. I have gigabit from comcast for 99/mo. In my area.

They do soak me for another 50 to get unlimited data. Don’t let me get started on data caps.:mad:
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Comcast has always been a rip-off and prices vary depending on where you live. The actual price for gigabit is $150 + $50 for unlimited, and don't forget taxes on the bill.

I settled for the 300mb package for $65 but taxes once again bring it up higher. I agree about the data caps being a rip-off as well, but there's nothing I can do about them.

As Comcast is the only provider in my area in Connecticut.
 
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