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Ask HN: What would you do with Gigabit internet?

by pastaking on 7/29/18, 3:40 PM with 7 comments

Hi HN, there is an option to get symmetric gigabit fiber internet (same download and upload speeds) at the new building I'm moving to. I'm debating whether I actually need that kind of speed (versus, say, 250 Mbps). What interesting things do you / would you do with really fast internet?

  • by hourislate on 7/29/18, 4:35 PM

    Interestingly enough, I am struggling with that same question. I have AT&T 1000Mbps service available to my home for $90 + tax. Currently I have 200 Mbps service with Charter/Spectrum for $65 + tax. I could switch to AT&T 300Mbps service for $70 + tax.

    From what I can gather, unless you're streaming 4k video, have a home server or do some serious gaming, I'm not sure a gig connection is necessary. It would also depend how many people would be using the service. A big family could probably take advantage of a gig pipe.

    For now I have decided to just stick with Charter and wait and see what happens with 5G over the next year instead of getting involved in new contracts.

  • by zzzcpan on 7/29/18, 5:13 PM

    Singe stream gigabit speed will only be possible to nearby datacenters and only if services there don't rate limit and are underutilized. A bit farther, say 40 ms away, and you will be happy to see even a 50 Mbps stream. Then there is your ISP, they won't allow you to use your gigabit for long and will throttle your connection if you use too much bandwidth. Which leaves you with casual use of things that can do multiple streams to different nodes, like torrents or backup software that can transfer data in parallel (rare so far).

  • by here-for-karma on 7/31/18, 5:46 PM

    I game, watch youtube, stream movies/shows. You don't really notice that you have gigabit until you need to download a game or something (if you torrent, I'm sure you'll notice it a lot).

    With streaming, I honestly can't remember the last time it had to pause for buffering, even on WiFi; so that's nice

  • by milankragujevic on 7/29/18, 4:18 PM

    I dont know, probably notjing. I managed to get up to 300 mbps with clever wan bonding and multiple 4g antenna arrays snd modems, but in the end I use the standard 40 Mbps (single antenna, no bonding) and don't even notice the speed. I wouldn't pay for 1Gbps. It's nice to have if you want to brag to friends but its useless... (Note I live in a village where average speeds are 10Mbps.)

  • by nvr219 on 7/29/18, 4:28 PM

    Honestly I'd probably torrent a lot just to see my seed stats be awesome. Nothing useful...

  • by RamunasM on 7/31/18, 1:32 PM

    I just upgraded to Gigabit last month. Previously had 100 Mbps, no real difference except for the speed tests. Not really worth it, but I'm paying ±28 EUR/month so no regrets.

  • by Rjevski on 7/29/18, 4:07 PM

    Run my own cloud storage. Get a small server with a few storage drives and back up to there.

    I use iCloud for now, but there’s something comforting about actually owning my data instead of trusting a third-party.