What are people doing with all the bandwidth?

[attrayant]

There is another thread where people are talking about 50 and 100 Mbps bandwidth service. I have to ask: what are people doing with all this bandwidth?

A little history: Back in Washington DC, I had basic DSL service on copper pairs. My needs were simple - web browsing, Netflix (often on two TVs simultaneously) and the occasional file (MP3/MP4) download. I clocked it at 600-800 Kbps and never once had reason to complain.

Then five years ago I came to Bangkok and found out that the inlaws' house had a several Mbps connection. Wow, I thought, that's going to feel amazing. But of course it didn't because my needs don't require more than a few hundred Kbps of bandwidth. I thought maybe that'll come in handy if seven or eight people all want to watch different movies online at the same time. But such a thing rarely happens.

Then a year or two later, brother in-law upgraded the house to 10 Mbps. Why? Promotion. A year later and another promotion suckered us into a 15 Mbps package. Now, (a few weeks ago) thanks to another promotion I've got 30 Mbps. That's like going from a two-lane highway to a ten-lane highway, but my car still goes only 80 kph. Those extra "lanes" are pretty much wasted. Yes I've got a much fatter pipe, not not necessarily a faster one. My brother in-law doesn't seem to get the difference between bandwidth and speed.

I can't imagine what I'd do with 30 Mbps. Open an internet cafe? My most demanding network app is Skype, but according to their support page, a standard Skype call requires only 128 Kbps (but they say 300 is recommended). Even if you're doing HD video calling, that's still only 1.5 Mbps.

I do the occasional HD movie download via iTunes, but they take usually between 20-30 minutes for a 2-3 GB file. But that's just a file download - and certainly not large enough to warrant more than a few Mbps of bandwidth.

I'd love to downgrade to a 5 Mbps package, and I probably wouldn't even use all of that 99% of the time. But checking out the ISPs shows nothing smaller than 15 Mbps internet service. I'd much rather have a high speed (faster) connection than a high bandwidth (wider) one. Of course whether or not a connection is fast depends on the entire round trip network topology and packet processing and not just the size of the port you've got on the switch. Right now I've averaging 34 ms to Google's DNS server on the other side of the world in Mountainview CA, but 300-400 ms to Beijing Telecom right next door.

Thoughts/comments?

[taotoo]

Try 4k 60fps video streaming on both and see which works better.

[MJCM]

You will miss the bandwidth when downloading from other places like Thailand.

iTunes, Netflix, Google (YouTube), MS etc etc use Cloud servers (Akamai etc etc) and that is why it feel so fast to download a file or watch a movie.

Ps: Do you really think that the Google DNS servers you are pinging are in the US of A ?? Ping to USA would be around 2xx ms.

Edit: Added some more company names

Edited May 14, 2016 by MJCM

[attrayant]

And where would I stream something like that from?

[KhunBENQ]

And where would I stream something like that from?

No tiring questions please

Internet cafe or big family with many gadgets (like me) need some xx MBit/s.

I have up to 9 devices on my 30 / 3 fibre connection and can easily watch high quality (720p) IPTV and hack/browse and youtube on the PC (this one).

A serious application would be heavy cloud use.

Syncing a lot of your data to a cloud server.

But which Thailand cloud server do you know or would you use.

Singapore is obviously the only foreign location that you can nearly reach these rates.

Streaming 4k from overseas: I believe when I see it.

And then there are these people who feel good with 4k on some tiny screen (smaller than 30"/28" for desktop use) which is a complete waste.

Edited May 14, 2016 by KhunBENQ

[drake]

Compared Download real speed results with testmy.net (no cached results like ookla a.o.):

Provider SanJose Germany HongKong

3BB ADSL 11 Mbps 2.6 Mbps 2.6 Mbps 11 Mbps

3BB FTTx 120 Mbps 4.4 Mbps 2.5 Mbps 16.7 Mbps

AIS 4G 112 Mbps 3.2 Mbps 6.1 Mbps 5.1 Mbps

[KhunBENQ]

testmynet, just tested download 50 MB from:

Frankfurt, Germany: 4.5 (ToT fibre).

Singapore, 14.9

Thats what I get, sometimes more, sometimes less.

So for these rates there is not much to ask "what to do with"

Edited May 14, 2016 by KhunBENQ

[taotoo]

And where would I stream something like that from?

Youtube!

[JAS21]

What's bandwidth please ....

[gandalf12]

What's bandwidth please ....

Is this for real? The bandwidth is the frequency spread between the 3dB points on a response curve

[Jdiddy]

Seen the size of games these days?

GTA5 was 65GB

[attrayant]

Even a heavy video stream isn't going to be too much trouble as long as the client is permitted to do some buffering. Again, speed isn't really all that critical here unless it's a two-way video link. That's when the delay will become noticeable. But we're kinda getting away from the point.

Internet cafe or big family with many gadgets (like me) need some xx MBit/s.

I have up to 9 devices on my 30 / 3 fibre connection and can easily watch high quality (720p) IPTV and hack/browse and youtube on the PC (this one).

A serious application would be heavy cloud use.

Syncing a lot of your data to a cloud server.

Yes, exactly my point. There are some exceptional cases where such a wide pipe might come in useful. How many typical Thai households have this kind of need? Most of us are boasting T3 bandwidth at tuk-tuk speeds. My connection to almost anywhere else in the world always routes through Singapore, and at that point the latency goes up to well over 200 ms. (point taken about the Google DNS name servers being potentially everywhere).

Kinda makes me wonder what the oversubscription rate is on the switch ports here.

[attrayant]

Seen the size of games these days?

GTA5 was 65GB

You're talking about a one-time file download that isn't delay-sensitive. My whole point is that people are buying bandwidth when what they really NEED is speed.

[Jdiddy]

Seen the size of games these days?

GTA5 was 65GB

You're talking about a one-time file download that isn't delay-sensitive. My whole point is that people are buying bandwidth when what they really NEED is speed.

Bandwidth is speed, i'd prefer to be able to download a game or movie in less then an hour rather then all day while still being able to watch utube or play an online game at an acceptable latency with no probs, maybe my girlfriend is making sure she is keeping face on facebook on her phone hammering the wifi too

Compared Download real speed results with testmy.net (

no cached results

like ookla a.o.):

Just tried both and testmy wasnt much different to speedtest, speedtest is great for just testing your connection too as the server is more local

What i did notice was the speed difference between a suburban 4g cell vs an indoor 4g cell (shopping mall) 5mbit/sec vs 40mbit/sec lol.

4G is allready congested but Thailand dosnt have decent sized LTE channels so to be expected

Edited May 14, 2016 by Jdiddy

[sniffdog]

If you don't see the benefits of those high bandwidth packages they are probably not for you.

[attrayant]

Well that's obvious. The conundrum is that no ISP here seems to offer anything less than 15 megs. I did say in the OP that I'd love to have a 5 Mbps link with low latency. That would be much more satisfying than 100 Mbps local loop with a 500 ms international round trip time. (yes I realize the local carriers can't do much about speeds once the route crosses an IX carrier, but I can still whine about it.)

[Pib]

Compared Download real speed results with testmy.net (no cached results like ookla a.o.):

Provider SanJose Germany HongKong

3BB ADSL 11 Mbps 2.6 Mbps 2.6 Mbps 11 Mbps

3BB FTTx 120 Mbps 4.4 Mbps 2.5 Mbps 16.7 Mbps

AIS 4G 112 Mbps 3.2 Mbps 6.1 Mbps 5.1 Mbps

testmynet, just tested download 50 MB from:

Frankfurt, Germany: 4.5 (ToT fibre).

Singapore, 14.9

Thats what I get, sometimes more, sometimes less.

So for these rates there is not much to ask "what to do with"

Goes to show upgrading to a high domestic speed plan usually does little for international speed when tested using a thorough speedtest like testmy.net.

[lopburi3]

But such a test is not real world for most downloads these days - which combine many connections - higher bandwidth does make a difference - especially outside of high usage hours. But perhaps even more important in our world of cloud operation the higher speed also has higher upload speeds (although often still very slow they are still better than normal ADSL offered here).

And I come from the 75 baud Teletype era.

[attrayant]

I asked a friend to drop a file into a cloud service in Beijing. It's 266 MB and the transfer rate is predicting another 7 hours to go. This is what the path looks like. I didn't bother resolving the host names once I got past the great firewall. Tell me again why I have a 30 Mbps internet connection?

[Don Mega]

Bandwidth is speed

really, since when ?

[PlastikbinLina]

In a word, squandering it! who gives a rat's arse anyway? The proper use of it would never be understood by the great unwashed as long as it is functioning as intended. You want an example? Okay. Thai road users. Two speeds, flat out and stop. Live or die!

[jonw8uk]

Are you saying a 3Gb file would download quicker on a 5Mbps low latency line than a 30Mbps thailand latency line?

edit for numbers!

Edited May 14, 2016 by jonw8uk

[Satcommlee]

34ms to mountain view defies the laws of physics!!

[MJCM]

34ms to mountain view defies the laws of physics!!

I think he knows that (I hope).

[Pib]

Bandwidth vs Speed.

http://etherealmind.com/basics-difference-bandwidth-speed/

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2227224/data-center/bandwidth-is-not-speed.html

But yea, usually when talking bandwidth and download speed at the layman's level they are mistakenly used interchangeably although there is a difference between the two.

Edited May 14, 2016 by Pib

[attrayant]

34ms to mountain view defies the laws of physics!!

Acknowledged in post #12

[manarak]

OP, if the quoted bandwidth was the real bandwidth, I would be happy with a 10MB plan.

Unfortunately, the real bandwidth is often a more or less fixed franction of the quoted bandwidth.

Now for example, I have a 50/10 plan, but I only get around 4 to 8 Mbit/s from international servers, around 13% of the quoted bandwidth.

I also happen to have several users on my network, there can be 3 computers and 4 phones watching movies, playing online games, etc.

You claim 1.5 Mbit is enough for HD video, but it's not.

You need at least 1.8 Mbit for 640x480 video at 25 fps using the best compression, and 640 x 480 is far from HD.

An actual HD video (1080p@24 or 25 fps) has a bitrate of about 10 Mbit.

[attrayant]

You claim 1.5 Mbit is enough for HD video, but it's not.

That's Skype's claim, not mine.

I've been on lines as small as T1 but those had committed bit rates and very low delay. That was a sweet ride while it lasted. Long-haul Internet is best-effort, aka 'it'll get there when it gets there'.

I don't think I can expect interexchange routes to improve their latency anytime soon, but it would be nice if people understood that a choppy skype call isn't going to get better by upgrading their local access from 15 to 30 Mbps.

Edited May 14, 2016 by attrayant

[Jdiddy]

Bandwidth is speed

really, since when ?

Higher bandwidth = more capacity for higher speeds

Heres a test, start downloading a few big torrents, then try a skype session or open up CMD and ping a server, take note of the ping time difference between a adsl connection and a 100mbit connection

For you old farts who can only do one low bitrate single connection task at a time then sure, stick with the 13mbit adsl2

If you want lower latency still then build your own fibre optic pipe to the USA and invent faster then lightspeed signalling tech

[cyberfarang]

Seen the size of games these days?

GTA5 was 65GB

Yes, that`s what it`s all about.

Us old farts are content with the basics because we mostly only do basic stuff online, but the young people and kids love their games, which means that for ISPs that only provide low speed Internet it`s bad for business. Go and stand outside an Internet cafe and you will see the place packed out with teens and kids playing online games.