I’m looking at getting new internet at the house, and they’ve got their different packages (500mbps, 350mbps, 1gbps). I defaulted to “oh, I’ll get the 500mbps, that’s about what I’ve got with the other people”, but then wondered what I’m actually getting from anything that is sending data to me.
I know that this is about speed, not quantity, and so not looking for “I downloaded 800 gigs of linux ISOs last month”, but rather thinking “Youtube probably isn’t going to upload 200mbps to me.” But maybe something like Steam does when I’m downloading a game?
If I only ever have my actual real-world downloads surpass 350mbps a few times a month, then maybe I save myself $10/month and get that instead of 500mbps.
I have a TP-link router with their (updated) firmware/software, not one of those home-built routers with OpenWRT or something like that, so that will probably limit me since I want to know for the whole system, not an individual device and so the router itself is probably what needs to be measured…
You might max out your throughput with popular torrents, else it’s indeed just steam I’m aware of to deliver. And then the question is really whether you download that many games that it actually matters.
Even on my 100 mbit line, downloading 50GB from steam takes me only about 1h. At 350mbit that should be less than 20 min, vs. ~7 min at 1gbps.
Personally I don’t download enough to justify the surcharge, I can easily just let it run through the night, or start in the morning and be done once I’m out of the shower and had my breakfast.