1mb vs 2mb vs 3mb - much of a difference?

eskimo

Just a basic question really but would really appreciate some advice!

I haven't had broadband access at home since last August when we were on 1mb. Recently we got BT Broadband which has upgraded to 2mb.

I was at home at the weekend and on using the 2mb broadband I didn't notice any difference to when I used the 1mb.

I'm now wondering would it be worth upgrading to 3mb? Would the download speeds increase significantly at all?

I don't wanna do it if I'm just gonna be wasting time and money.

What do you think?

msmx5

It really depends on what you'll be using the net for.

If you'll just be surfing with a bit of email, then 1mb/2mb should be fine. Latency and DNS lookup times have an impact on how fast your browsing experience will appear. Upgrading to 3mb won't make a very noticable difference.

If however you download or upload large files then the faster packages should make a difference to you.

Adey2002

Theres a difference of 1Mb between 1Mb and 2Mb brodand, and 1mb between the 2Mb and 3Mg broadband. Theres a 2Mb difference between the 1Mb and 3Mb though. :rolleyes:

Seriously, you should see a difference in download speeds. Not the full 1Mb, but a lot of it. Really depends what/where you're downloading from too.

Do a speed test to make sure you are actually getting 2Mb down.

eskimo

I basically use it for downloading music and tv shows etc... But the download speeds were frustratingly slow. They were definitely no higher than with they were with the 1mb and often criminally slow!

So you'd recommend the 3mb then?

(I would get 4mb broadband or higher if I could but the area my parents live is extremely limited to certain Broadband services! And they only use it for surfing the net and email anyway.)

> Has anyone upgraded to 3mb and noticed a significant increase in speed when downloading music and video files?

BendiBus

It also depends on where you're downloading from. If the server you're downloading from can only serve up data at 1mb then that's as much as you'll get no matter how fast your own connection is.

po0k

Things are never fast enough.

8Meg download is about as much as you can make use of today. Of course more is better.
8Meg upload - today - would improve everything drasticly, particularly things like www.getdemocracy.com

halkar

Depends on the sites downloads are faster but there is a bigger difference in uploads for the packages of 1,2,3mb

tomk

eskimo wrote:

> Has anyone upgraded to 3mb and noticed a significant increase in speed when downloading music and video files?

To answer this specific question - absolutely, yes. I download constantly from HEAnet, and I'm loving the 315KB/s that I'm now getting, compared to the 205 or so that I got with 2Mb. Of course, 205 was heaven compared to 52 on the old 512Kb service. Similarly, if/when the next upgrade comes along, I'll be wondering how I ever got by on a measly 3Mb........:rolleyes:

Like SyxPak says, it's never fast enough - the more you get, the more you want.

CyberGhost

Browsing:

A jump from 1 meg to 2 is noticible

a jump from 2 meg to 3 is not(atleast I could not tell it much)

Downloading:

Well of course there is a difference, to find out how big, use download time calculators