I have symmetric 1Gbps and do a LOT of data transfer (compared to 99.99% of people). And even then I rarely really would need or even notice more than 100Mbps.
For most people, in the real world, why is 100Mbps “very slow”?
This isn’t really true. An HD movie on Netflix/Hulu/Prime/etc is multi GB. It just doesn’t need to download fast, because anything faster than the bitrate of the movie won’t be perceptible.
But there are also games on platforms like Steam, Epic, PlayStation, etc. These are often very large.
For context, a 4K Blu-ray disc has a maximum transfer rate of 144 Mbps. Most streaming services are compressing much more heavily than that. Closer to 20 or 40 Mbps, depending on the service. They tend to be limited by managing datacenter bandwidth, not end user connections.
While I get that people hate having to download big games over 100Mbps, it’s something you do once and then play the game for weeks.
So build the capability and people will use it when they need it. My point still stands that 100Mbps is slow, even if most people are fine with it day to day.
Also, for a family of four, that would mean only 2 of them would be able to watch a 40Mbps HD stream at once. I get that that is relatively rare for 3 people in a family to want to stream at that speed at the same time, but I wouldn’t call something fast if it can’t support even that.
(YouTube recommends a bitrate of 68Mbps for 4K 60fps content and 45Mbps for 4K 30fps. Higher when using HDR.)
Where I’m going with this is that there are much more important things than going significantly over 100Mbps. Quality of service, latency, jumbo MTU sizes, and IPv6 will affect you in many more practical ways. The bandwidth number tends to be used as a proxy (consciously or not) for overall quality issues, but it’s not a very good one. That’s how we’ll end up with 1Gbps connections that will lag worse than a 10Mbps connection from 2003.
Average 4K BDRIP movie is 60 GB, average AAA game is 60-100+ GB. So you are saying that watching movie once a week and downloading one game is not normal? Using 1 GBit Internet means saving 3-6 hours of time per week.
Watching movies and playing AAA games is normal, sure.
Downloading 4K BDRIPs and a new AAA game every week definitely isn’t. Most people probably stream their movies, and even those prone to pirating their content are likely downloading re-encoded copies, not full sized BDRIPs.
On top of that, it’s not like you have to sit there and wait for it. You’re only really saving that time if it’s time you were going to spend sitting and staring at your download progress instead of doing something else.
I’m not saying edge cases don’t exist where someone would notice a real difference in having >100Mbps, but it’s just that, an edge case.
Most of the time, the idea to watch a film comes to me quite suddenly, so I have to wait until the film is at least partially downloaded before I start watching it. And even downloading an app from the repository takes 10 times less time. And 1000 MBps internet is only 5-10 euros more expensive than 100 MBps.
It’s amazing how much our views change with time. My dad was definitely a super early adopter of cable when it became available in our area, if I recall it was 16 Mbps which was unreal to me in 2002. I made do with 5 Mbps in uni and it was totally usable.
But now, I’ve had 1Gbps for years and wow it’s so different, changes your habits too. I don’t hoard installed games as much, I can pull them down in minutes so why keep something installed if I’m not going to use it?
100Mbps is still very slow. Much better than 25Mbps, but still slow.
I have symmetric 1Gbps and do a LOT of data transfer (compared to 99.99% of people). And even then I rarely really would need or even notice more than 100Mbps.
For most people, in the real world, why is 100Mbps “very slow”?
Because downloading GTA V takes 2 1/2 hours at 100Mbps, and 14 minutes at 1Gbps.
Because downloading large files takes hours instead of minutes
The vast majority of people are not downloading multi GB files frequently
This isn’t really true. An HD movie on Netflix/Hulu/Prime/etc is multi GB. It just doesn’t need to download fast, because anything faster than the bitrate of the movie won’t be perceptible.
But there are also games on platforms like Steam, Epic, PlayStation, etc. These are often very large.
For context, a 4K Blu-ray disc has a maximum transfer rate of 144 Mbps. Most streaming services are compressing much more heavily than that. Closer to 20 or 40 Mbps, depending on the service. They tend to be limited by managing datacenter bandwidth, not end user connections.
While I get that people hate having to download big games over 100Mbps, it’s something you do once and then play the game for weeks.
So build the capability and people will use it when they need it. My point still stands that 100Mbps is slow, even if most people are fine with it day to day.
Also, for a family of four, that would mean only 2 of them would be able to watch a 40Mbps HD stream at once. I get that that is relatively rare for 3 people in a family to want to stream at that speed at the same time, but I wouldn’t call something fast if it can’t support even that.
(YouTube recommends a bitrate of 68Mbps for 4K 60fps content and 45Mbps for 4K 30fps. Higher when using HDR.)
Where I’m going with this is that there are much more important things than going significantly over 100Mbps. Quality of service, latency, jumbo MTU sizes, and IPv6 will affect you in many more practical ways. The bandwidth number tends to be used as a proxy (consciously or not) for overall quality issues, but it’s not a very good one. That’s how we’ll end up with 1Gbps connections that will lag worse than a 10Mbps connection from 2003.
Just updates running in the background use an enormous amount, let alone full game downloads.
Twitch and Youtube use a decent amount per hour as well.
I use to think that until I spent a bit of time with a gamer. 75Gig updates etc… the fuck is in those game ! The whole Netflix library?
So Games, 4K videos etc…
Tell that to my torrent box 😎
You are not the majority of people
A file large enough to take hours, plural, at 100Mbps is more than 90GB. Doing that regularly is definitely not normal usage.
Tell that to everyone who has played a Rockstar game.
Average 4K BDRIP movie is 60 GB, average AAA game is 60-100+ GB. So you are saying that watching movie once a week and downloading one game is not normal? Using 1 GBit Internet means saving 3-6 hours of time per week.
Watching movies and playing AAA games is normal, sure.
Downloading 4K BDRIPs and a new AAA game every week definitely isn’t. Most people probably stream their movies, and even those prone to pirating their content are likely downloading re-encoded copies, not full sized BDRIPs.
On top of that, it’s not like you have to sit there and wait for it. You’re only really saving that time if it’s time you were going to spend sitting and staring at your download progress instead of doing something else.
I’m not saying edge cases don’t exist where someone would notice a real difference in having >100Mbps, but it’s just that, an edge case.
Most of the time, the idea to watch a film comes to me quite suddenly, so I have to wait until the film is at least partially downloaded before I start watching it. And even downloading an app from the repository takes 10 times less time. And 1000 MBps internet is only 5-10 euros more expensive than 100 MBps.
It’s amazing how much our views change with time. My dad was definitely a super early adopter of cable when it became available in our area, if I recall it was 16 Mbps which was unreal to me in 2002. I made do with 5 Mbps in uni and it was totally usable.
But now, I’ve had 1Gbps for years and wow it’s so different, changes your habits too. I don’t hoard installed games as much, I can pull them down in minutes so why keep something installed if I’m not going to use it?
I remember thinking, “How am I ever going to fill this 100MB hard drive? That’s so much space!” That was some time around 1997, I think.