Question About Internet Speed

[TickTockMan]

Would this internet speed be fast enough for me? Or do you think it would be too slow to play Facebook games, listen to podcasts, watch Youtube, surf the web and download a bit? Mostly at the same time?

Low-income families have cheap option for internet access

Some families may have more options when it comes to finding affordable internet.

AT&T announced a new plan to provide discounted internet access as low as $5 a month to low-income families. Any home where at least one person receives food stamps will be eligible for the new program.

AT&T will offer internet connection speed of three megabits per second for $5 a month. Faster speeds of five or 10 megabits per second will cost $10 a month.


http://www.kptv.com/story/31799318/...heap-option-for-internet-access#ixzz46gl9J52b

 

[trinket]

This is a nice initiative. There's always debate about whether Internet access should be considered a more basic core utility like phone service, water, electricity, heat/gas, etc. because it's increasingly difficult to apply for jobs, find out information/forms for government services, conduct banking, etc. without it.

3 megabit/sec is fairly slow. You did a good job of listing your usage patterns but the problem is it's difficult to advise you without seeing how you "push" your connection (or computer, and whether your connection is waiting for your computer, vice versa - many people get frustrated if one out-performs the other or is bottlenecked by the other) and what kind of a user you are - how aggressive the multitasking, that kind of thing. Somebody's 85-year-old great-grandmother doing what you listed might be totally happy and not notice a thing. Meanwhile some 18-year-old might be cursing that speed every second.

The article does point this out, which is true:

Though any connection might be an improvement for many homes, 10 megabits per second and under is still considered a slow connection.

Looking at what you do - for listening to podcasts, many let you download locally as .MP3's (and those that don't there are plug-in tools to help with it) so you can listen to them "offline" right from the drive. You can do similar with Youtube videos or pause and let them buffer ahead significantly. Websurfing can depend on how graphic-rich the sites you're hitting are.

I had 5 megabit/sec DSL for a while when I moved to a new city because that's all they offered in my older building and found it a bit pokey. I could watch a streaming video-based podcast and that's about it - the moment I fetched E-mail, downloaded a podcast .MP3 or went surfing in other tabs, the stream would start to break up. I'd sometimes go to "audio" mode if I wanted to do other stuff at the same time. But I definitely noticed that I couldn't push the 5 megabit like I wanted. Your experience with 3 might be worse. Maybe you would know someone who might have that speed (or even 5) and can bring your machine over and experiment real-world. I think there might also be throttlers (you could try this on your computer itself or the router) that let you cap your speed of your existing connection and that might give you an idea.

 

[TickTockMan]

Thank you, Trinket.

 

[seven2go]

3 megs isn't THAT bad.
There's a LOT more to the internet than YOUR speed to consider.
Network interfaces, peek hour usage and other things all contribute to crap performance.
For $5 a month HOW can you go wrong?

 

[TickTockMan]

3 megs isn't THAT bad.
There's a LOT more to the internet than YOUR speed to consider.
Network interfaces, peek hour usage and other things all contribute to crap performance.
For $5 a month HOW can you go wrong?

I will have to check to see if there is a contract. Maybe I can try it.

 

[jbrown329]

3 megabit isn't fast enough to watch online (YouTube) video. Before Google bought YouTube, you could pause and let YouTube buffer. YouTube doesn't buffer now. At the last place I lived I payed for 7megabit but consistently got 9. I could watch online video but trying to stream CSPAN was impossible.

You can still use forums but the pages will take longer to load. Any pages with graphics will take longer to load too.

When I moved to my current location, my top speed was 1.5meg (they said 3, yeah right). That didn't last long before I went with cable and dumped DSL.

Century Link advertises (up to) a 20meg speed for $20 if you have qualifying phone service along with it. That's a 12 month contract. Buddy of mine pays though the nose and not that speed because he doesn't have a land line.

 

[TickTockMan]

3 megabit isn't fast enough to watch online (YouTube) video. Before Google bought YouTube, you could pause and let YouTube buffer. YouTube doesn't buffer now. At the last place I lived I payed for 7megabit but consistently got 9. I could watch online video but trying to stream CSPAN was impossible.

You can still use forums but the pages will take longer to load. Any pages with graphics will take longer to load too.

When I moved to my current location, my top speed was 1.5meg (they said 3, yeah right). That didn't last long before I went with cable and dumped DSL.

Century Link advertises (up to) a 20meg speed for $20 if you have qualifying phone service along with it. That's a 12 month contract. Buddy of mine pays though the nose and not that speed because he doesn't have a land line.

Thanks. I am not sure if I should try it or not.

 

[CoolBlue71]

I am not sure if I have it right; but, 25Mbps in download and 05Mbps in upload are a minimum requirement for quality in a household of one or two in which the connection isn’t be used by numerous people at one time. A streaming service like Netflix recommends 25Mbps in download for viewing its titles.

I have 75Mbps in download and 10Mbps from Comcast. And anything I view in a streaming device is usually not a problem.

I did not read the linked article by this thread’s OP. (Sorry.) But, I hope it works out for you, OP.