I ask because I feel I need to save some money in the oncoming months. Currently, I pay over $76 for 100MBps/1000GB cap. And I don’t think it’s a bad deal, but they’re going to be hiking it up to $90+ by next October and I feel it is not worth that. But I also need to save money too.
What is the difference between 55MB and 100MB when it comes to speed? The cap for the 55MBps plan is 350GB and I tried asking if that could be altered but the ISP says they can’t. This plan will cost me $30 a month.
All I ever do anymore is just stream YouTube, sometimes Hulu/Netflix/Tubi. Occasionally I’ll download a game or two, multiplayer gaming is non-existent.
Edit: There’s been a lot of good responses replied to this and I appreciate it.
I’m leaning towards on downgrading with the volume of people that suggest that it isn’t that bad, but it boils down to preferences and habitual behaviors when using the internet. With so many games already downloaded and being left to just streaming/Second Life, I think it warrants the change.
I just wish that my ISP would’ve kicked up the cap to 500GB because that’d sweeten the deal much more but this ISP is not well known and these kind of ISPs operate on different worlds than the big names.
Furthermore, people have suggested going 5G Wireless but the problem with that is that my apartment management is stingy as fuck so it’s not an option for me nor does Verizon say that they can offer a plan in my current location. Fiber connections such as Google Fiber, MetroNet .etc aren’t an option.
Century Link seems to only offer $70 for…10MB in my location (Fucking awful)
Mediacom says they can’t even service my area (then how come I see your vans around where I am with other customers?)
May I ask what city and state you live in? These options seem terrible.
Yeah that’s pretty cheeks pricing. I pay less than double that for symmetrical gig speed.
Des Moines Iowa.
Yes I know the options are terrible and I am aware if alternative ISPs but my apartment management only offers just one ISP. It is not Verizon or any other big name, just some not so well known company with a site design from the 90s in every bad way.
May I humbly suggest Verizon 5G home internet. I checked and it’s widely available in Des Moines. Around $45 a month with a discount if you also have Verizon mobile. 300mbps down and like 30 up. No caps. It’s just a white box that uses cell towers, so you are not limited to whatever shitty service your apartment complex has contracted with. I used it for 2 or 3 years in Providence, RI, and it was terrific. Cheap, fast enough for my work needs and streaming on 2 TVs, and I never had any problems.
Tried doing an area search, only got a form for my address to notify me when service is available.
Why does your apartment management have a say in it?
If there are other providers in the area then you likely already have lines running to your place and shouldn’t need their sign off on it.
Because they are the shitty kind. Here is what I do not get, I have seen CenturyLink and Mediacom vans come in my area. I assume it is to service people’s connections or other things. If my apartment management tells me that VisionSystems is all that they can offer, why do I see vans from other ISPs come here?
And Mediacom isnt too far from us either.
Mediacom and CenturyLink claim to not service my building though so something is not adding up.
Last summer I switched to Tmo 5G home internet. At my location it beats the 100/20 cable plan I had at half the price. YMMV, my last house only 1/4 mile away it was unusably slow, like 20/1
5G fixed wireless is the way. I could pay Cox $120/mo for a 500Mbps cable line with a data cap, or I could pay Verizon $60/mo for 5G and get 1200Mbps with no BS fake data cap.
5G home internet is cheap because not a lot of people have it yet. Jump on the train now OP before it gets more expensive.
The only catch is that you have to make sure you have good line-of-sight to the tower before you order. That’s the key to getting good speeds. Look out your windows and try to find some 5G antennas. In my neighborhood they’re installed on the light poles.
That said, even if you can only get LTE service, chances are it’ll still be cheaper and faster than the competition in your area. So it still might be worth it to look into it.
I started on a 50Mbps plan which was a massive upgrade from what Comcast offered at the time, so I was pretty pleased with that. At one point I noticed something dragging down my connection, and found signs of people attacking my servers. That was easily dealt with, however what surprised me was the speed of the traffic I was seeing. After blocking the attack I pushed up my torrents and realized I had been upgraded to a 100Mbps connection and didn’t realize it (I really do love my local provider!).
So yeah, for general web browsing you probably won’t notice any difference between those two speeds. If you are downloading specific content then of course the downgrade will take twice as long, and as others mentioned it shouldn’t affect your streaming speeds at all.
55mbps down will be enough when lower cost is most important. it’s about the download speed we have at the office (55mbps), and at home too (faster but network gear is slower than the pipe coming in, so 55-60mbps is what i get on the main pc).
we can have a remote desktop going with multimedia coming through that (for work; low bitrate but latency matters), 2-3 hd streams, a couple screens on web sites, something downloading a huge batch of updates, an online ‘shooter’ game being played, and still not worry about loading up something else to use some more.
for straight downloads from servers and cdn that can handle it, expect 2-4 minutes for a typical linux iso download, and for big downloads about 25 gigabytes per hour max.
I regularly self throttle to 5 Mbs – you’ll survive.
If anything there might be a slim chance that you’ll hit your data cap of 350gb.
Assuming you’re just doing 480/720p streaming you should be good. But if you download 2-3 recentish games that might kick you over.
You might try turning on data gathering on your router if it offers it to see how much you are using.
