How much internet does one person need?

[The Glyphstone]

I've moving to a new apartment soon and have the opportunity to choose my own internet service for the first time (previous places bundled it into rent).

I do spend a lot of time online, but I dont play any hyper-competitive multiplayer games where lag is deadly. I'll work from home once in a while with a Teams video meeting, and once in a blue moon stream something.

Bundled with my phone plan (Verizon), I can get 300mbs for $25/month, 500mbs for $45, or 1gbs for $70. The gigabyte is definitely overkill, so its the 2nd and 3rd tier I need to pick from.

[Whoracle]

300 is plenty. I have 2 ppl working from home, heavy streaming and an IT job, and am more than fine with 400mbit/s.

Upstream might be interesting for backups, though.

[tyckspoon]

Concur, if the service is good (you consistently actually get somewhere near your nominal speed, it doesn't come with a cripplingly low data usage cap) then the 'low' tier there should be perfectly good for you. For most people the use cases that would call for more would be things like -
You regularly stream high-quality video (1080p resolution and up, most video sources are still transmitting 480 or 720 at most even if they are capable of providing a higher one - you usually have to specifically ask for it) or other very large data sets.
You regularly stream -out- or otherwise need to send data back upstream, in which case you may require a higher tier service because upload rates are often much lower than download rates and/or companies have relatively loose limits on downstream data use but strict ones one on upstream (check the terms of service for this one, it's basically a 'don't run a server from your home on our service, you're not paying enough for that' clause.)
You download/reinstall large modern games a lot. Not so much for download speed, but nothing eats a data cap like a 70GB game install, and higher service tiers tend to have much more generous or no data usage limits. Again, double check the terms of service being offered.

.. and honestly even for those more heavy user cases or for multiple users doing such 300 mbps is probably enough raw speed, the higher tiers would likely be used more for the other benefits that usually come with them like removed data caps or improved upload capacity rather than just download rate.

[crayzz]

1080p video sits at around 15mbps. 4k video that goes up to 60. It would take a family of 5 each streaming 4k video to saturate 300mbps.

I dont play any hyper-competitive multiplayer games where lag is deadly.

On a side note, even if you did the bitrate wouldn't be the important part, multiplayer doesn't usually require that high of a bitrate. You're downloading and uploading things like character positions and inputs, not models and textures (aside maybe from the initial map load). What matters for multiplayer more is the latency, how long it takes to send a signal to the server. You can have decent bitrates with garbage latency and vice versa.

[The Glyphstone]

Verizon doesn't have a data cap, though I guess they'll throttle you if you hit the multiple-thousands-GB level. Upload speed is also 300mbs at the cheapest, so I'm gathering that will be more than plenty for my needs.

[gbaji]

Going to agree with the group here. 300mbps is plenty for a single person (heck, several people really). Due to old hardware that hasn't been upgraded in forever in my area, I'm still capped at somewhere around 40mpbs at my home, yet rarely if ever notice any performance problems (it's just me though). Streaming works fine (well, mostly). I work from home all the time, using Teams and pixel based tools, no problem. The only thing that ever gets me is if I forget to adjust how I'm downloading some large vendor software. Nothing worse that realizing (right after clicking on the link) that I'm now committed to downloading the whole thing to my laptop local disk, and will then have to upload it from that disk (going across my home network a second freaking time) to the correct remote drive located on the company network. Yeah. Done that. Many times. Sheesh.

I would not pay any additional cost for more bandwidth. Unless there's some other throttle in the system they're not telling you though. Um... Also make sure you have good wifi (or wired) coverage for your devices. Most of the slowness people experience isn't in the up/down speed itself, but inteference or blockages of the signal in their home. Less of an issue in an appartment, but pay attention to where you place large mirrors, for example. I've seen many cases where someone has a wifi router in the living room area, and complains that their internet sucks in their bedoom, and you look in the bedroom and they've got a dresser/mirror thing up against the wall that is right between the two rooms. Think in terms of line of sight. Signal will pass through wood and drywall just fine, but metal/glass, not so much. I've also seen large appliances (like a fridge) create blind spots in a cone behind them (and appartment layouts can be "odd" sometimes). And yeah, that giant flat screen TV that's directly in line between your wifi router and some other area will likely block stuff as well (but interestingly enough, still not as much as a giant mirror will). Not sure I'd bother with a repeater system for an apartment, but just paying attention to where you actually place the router in relation to other things will help avoid a lot of problems.

It's not a bad idea to install like a speedtest app on your phone, and just walk around the space runnning it in different locations, just to see what you get where.

[gomipile]

I've moving to a new apartment soon and have the opportunity to choose my own internet service for the first time (previous places bundled it into rent).

I do spend a lot of time online, but I dont play any hyper-competitive multiplayer games where lag is deadly. I'll work from home once in a while with a Teams video meeting, and once in a blue moon stream something.

Bundled with my phone plan (Verizon), I can get 300mbs for $25/month, 500mbs for $45, or 1gbs for $70. The gigabyte is definitely overkill, so its the 2nd and 3rd tier I need to pick from.

Your gigabit option is cheaper than I pay for 25mbps.

[Tyndmyr]

I'd start out with the cheap plan, and upgrade only if I have problems.

Internet companies are generally pretty amenable to upgrades, so there's very little risk doing it that way...and it'll probably be enough.

[gbaji]

Your gigabit option is cheaper than I pay for 25mbps.

A lot of that (both options and price) have to do with how recently/often the "last mile" network infrastructure has been upgraded in the area. And there is certainly a pattern in terms of which areas tend to get upgraded and which seem to keep missing out on each cycle (where I live the infrastructure literally hasn't been upgraded in 20 years). But I'll leave that analysis as an exercise for the reader since it'll likely delve into out of bounds discussions.

I will point out that, everything else being equal, apartments tends to have the most likely access to very high speed internet, followed by condos/townhomes, then single family homes (and yeah, I suppose we could put "homes sitting out in the boonies on large plots of private land" at the very bottom). That's just due to "bang for buck" infrastructure installation costs. So yeah, I'm often surprised at how cheap/fast other people's internet speeds are relative to mine. I literally have the top speed you can get in my area without paying for a "home business" plan. Which is pretty ridiculous when you consider folks casually discussing 1gbps speeds as a check box option to pick when moving in to a rental unit.

I'm not bitter or anything. Nope. Not one bit!

[gomipile]

A lot of that (both options and price) have to do with how recently/often the "last mile" network infrastructure has been upgraded in the area. And there is certainly a pattern in terms of which areas tend to get upgraded and which seem to keep missing out on each cycle (where I live the infrastructure literally hasn't been upgraded in 20 years). But I'll leave that analysis as an exercise for the reader since it'll likely delve into out of bounds discussions.

I will point out that, everything else being equal, apartments tends to have the most likely access to very high speed internet, followed by condos/townhomes, then single family homes (and yeah, I suppose we could put "homes sitting out in the boonies on large plots of private land" at the very bottom). That's just due to "bang for buck" infrastructure installation costs. So yeah, I'm often surprised at how cheap/fast other people's internet speeds are relative to mine. I literally have the top speed you can get in my area without paying for a "home business" plan. Which is pretty ridiculous when you consider folks casually discussing 1gbps speeds as a check box option to pick when moving in to a rental unit.

I'm not bitter or anything. Nope. Not one bit!

It's about a half kilometer walk from my front door to the front door "next door." We only get 25mbps here because that's the floor for federal broadband subsidies.

Edit: math error

[crayzz]

It's about a half kilometer walk from my front door to the front door "next door." We only get 25mbps here because that's the floor for federal broadband subsidies.

Edit: math error

Hey, if it makes you feel any better, my dad's place is literally one telephone pole away from even getting broadband. His choices are dialup or very expensive satellite, but his neighbour about a half kilometer down gets broadband. Bell refuses to extend the broadband line to his house unless he pays them a massive installation fee.

[Dice Goblin]

I've moving to a new apartment soon and have the opportunity to choose my own internet service for the first time (previous places bundled it into rent).

I do spend a lot of time online, but I dont play any hyper-competitive multiplayer games where lag is deadly. I'll work from home once in a while with a Teams video meeting, and once in a blue moon stream something.

Bundled with my phone plan (Verizon), I can get 300mbs for $25/month, 500mbs for $45, or 1gbs for $70. The gigabyte is definitely overkill, so its the 2nd and 3rd tier I need to pick from.

Currently running 1000.... it maybe overkill but I can stream on EVERYTHING!! Muhahha