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…
Use a speed test site?
Also: depending on the model of your TP-Link router you may be able to flash the firmware to use OpenWRT. My first time using it was with a TP-Link router; it just didn’t have every feature.
Steam and the occasional torrent is really the only time I see anything using my full internet speeds, though. But those are also used for extremely large downloads; many times larger than a streaming video.