The Truth About Faster Internet: It's Not Worth It

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Reply to
Winfield Hill
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Depends on what you mean by faster. If you're on some DSL line that;s only 1.5 MBits and you go to cable at 100, it's very likely going to be worth it for most people. If you have 50 Mbits with an existing provider and pay them more to go to 200, then few people will see a benefit that;s worth it or even a benefit at all. The latter seems to be what the article is talking about.

Reply to
Whoey Louie

In the case of Comcast, those speed increments are only $10 apart.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

I occasionally do giant Dropbox transfers, so speed is nice. 50M is good, 400M is a bit better but not really necessary.

I paid for 50M at home, got 130M, and Comcast just replaced our modem and upgraded up to something astronomical.

Truckee is a problem. On a holiday weekend when all the kids are inside watching movies (why come to the mountains to do that?) and playing games, things get annoyingly slow.

Reply to
John Larkin

On a sunny day (20 Aug 2019 10:54:32 -0700) it happened Winfield Hill wrote in :

Essentially it is correct, I do not need faster than the 4G I have now either,

However in the past 3G was also OK, but youtube came, and just trying CNN takes lots of bandwidth even my online banking seems to take MBs just to log in.

So when 5G comes, advertisers will find stuff to send to you that takes Giga Bytes, and for you to see anything at all you will need the high speed. It has always been that way, this is also the reason TV moved from DVB-S to DVB-S2 and DVB-T to DVB-T2 here and ever and ever higher resolutions, while 80% of the people cannot even see the pixels. It is all about advertising,

This is why Usenet and some text based groups have a much higher information content than all those blurbs, it is still free of advertising.

I use an ad blocker, and if sites want me to switch it off I just go to an other site, This reduces bandwidth, usage, I am still below 10 GB a month.

I can see a future where people can no longer read and write but use smartphones with icons to express there needs and emotions (emotions)...

Hope it does not go so far, but ... It would lose something valuable.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Network backbone bottleneck?

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 Thanks, 
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Reply to
Winfield Hill

Could be. Or maybe the local cable company - the only option - needs more infrastructure everywhere.

I do big uploads, which the kids don't do. When the upload speed gets way below 1M, that slows things down.

At work, we have symmetric 400+400 over our dish on the roof. That's nice for sending big PDFs and doing giant Dropbox syncs.

I've got to remember to not run LT Spice in a Dropbox folder. It tries to upload .RAW files.

Reply to
John Larkin

But why do people text, when they could talk?

Reply to
John Larkin

I agree, I can stream to 3 TV's, my internet radio and use my computer (the one that could be replaced sans sales tax) and I have no complaint even with 60Mbps. I gives me 59 Mbps with VPN on and 63 Mbps off. 30 to 60 was a $5 upgrade, probably not available anymore. I think it's now 100MBPS or none. Mikek

Reply to
amdx

Because it's an easier, better way to communicate short messages?

"Running late, be there at 6?"

Why would you want to call, bother someone, just to communicate that?

Or you can text, "The $4K price for the car is OK".

No confusion, you have proof of what you said.

Reply to
Whoey Louie

I can say that faster than I can type that, especially while riding a bicycle.

We should invent a voice operated equivalent to texting. Maybe some day we'll have the technology.

Texting seems to be a modern narcotic. A lot of people do it constantly. What do they have to say?

I never text. I left my phone up at the cabin two weeks ago and don't miss it. Well, the clock and calendar are handy. I've never owned a wristwatch.

Reply to
John Larkin

Phones are for /other/ people's convenience; phones calls interrupt what I am doing.

With SMSs and emails, they write when it is convenient for them, I read when it is convenient for me.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Even if someone could use the extra bandwidth, in many cases the speed is limited by the /latency/ or by the server.

That's doubly true when, for example, a web page needs many independent http transactions for all the trackers and advertising gunk.

With a slow connection, installing adblock and noscript can noticeably speed up browsing the web.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

and if it has any addresses, dates, times, names etc. you have for it later

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

Think of it as an asynchronous form of email where the recipient doesn't have to drop everything to respond but gets a ping. It is really good for short non-urgent messages like "get some milk on your way home".

What was the electricity/gas meter reading today? No need for pad and pen if the number is there in your txt timeline.

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Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

This is exactly my attitude as well.

Reply to
Dimiter_Popoff

But why type that and walk into a light pole? Don't we have voice-to-text technology? Send a text, but speak it!

Reply to
John Larkin

Wow! You *are* out of the loop. You don't have to type it. Just say it to the phone and it will send the text. I do that in the car all the time. In MD you aren't allowed to hold your phone at all. So everything has to be hands free.

OMG! We do, it's called texting. I guess you are just being silly.

It's actually a bit absurd to think talking is better than texting. The level of slight isolation in texting provides a nice buffer for the simple things that don't actually require initiating a conversation. Forget the hello, goodbye, what did you say?

Less of a narcotic than talking. Many people do that solely because they like the sound of their own voice.

Yeah, I can see that in you. Not willing to actually try new things so much unless they fall well within your comfort zone.

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Reply to
Rick C

I use an adblock on one of my browsers and some sites won't let me browse. :(

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Rick C

Talking takes longer, and the person you want to talk to has to answer their phone.

If you don't need an instant response, a text is usually fine, and you don't have to put in the socially lubricating exchanges that stretch telephone conversations.

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Bill Sloman

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