100mbs vs 500mbs

BlackEdelweiss

I was thinking of switching to Sky Glass as it is cheaper than my current setup including getting a new TV and soundboard. The main problem is that I can only get a 100mbs connection with sky but I have a 500mbs connection with virgin media at the minute. The sky guy told me this should not affect anything as most devices don't utilise the full speed anyway. My son does a lot of gaming on PC and has a vr headset. The other kids stream to their laptops.

Would going down to 100mbs affect any of this? My son said he only gets about 16mbs download speed when downloading games.

dam099

Sky may not even be 100mbps, those speeds sound like VDSL which is up to 100mbps depending on distance from cabinet. Virgin 500mbps is usually the full speed as would a full FTTH connection.

BlackEdelweiss

This is what I get on speediest if that means anything.

colm_mcm

This is what you’re getting on Virgin Media 500mbps?

Upload is exactly what you’d expect but download is miles off.

BlackEdelweiss

Yes, on my phone at least.

kippy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120913636#Comment_120913636

Wireless then,

If you plug in a laptop to the Virgin box, what do you get on speedtest?

WiFi isn't a great way to measure the speef provided by your ISP.

You would notice if you went from 500 to 100, especially if you have a lot of 4K or HD streaming to various devices at the same.

BlackEdelweiss

This is wireless on my laptop.

GalwayGaillimh

Need to plug a network cable from your laptop to the back of the virgin box then run speed test..

Nowso

dont drop from ftth to vdsl - vdsl will not support what you need

sky glass channel list is limted - sky stream is now out and you dont need to switch to sky for that . id look at other options 2

BlackEdelweiss

Cheers. I thought with the TV and soundboard it was looking like a good deal but I don't want to sacrifice speed for the rest of the house over it. Our TV is 5 years old and the soundbar probably 8 years. Both working fine but who knows how long more for.

I could keep our existing broadband but this puts the overall price above what we are paying now.

You’ll likely find VDSL a big downgrade compared to cable. You will eventually have access to FTTH in the next couple of years at most - they are rolling out fast.

However, VDSL is distance dependent. The service is fibre to the cabinet and a form of DSL from there over telephone lines to your house. It is not ‘fibre’ it’s just very fast DSL.

The speed on FTTH is what you’re signed up to. 500, 1000 or 2000 mbit/s. The speed on FTTC is ‘best effort’ - it depends on how long your phone line is, the type (thickness of the copper) and quality of junctions etc on the route. The speed drops off rapidly with every additional 10 metres or so. You could be looking at 30-70mbit/s rather than 100, unless you can literally see the cabinet from your window basically.

The only thing I would say is that cable also isn’t real fibre. It’s better than DSL though. The ping times on VM are often horrible because of their network design.

A lot of traffic seems to route though Amsterdam and also the cable modem tech is just not quite as latency free as other technologies. It also shares trunks with multiple premises, so you can get quite a lot of contention if there are heavy users on the same run of cable or local cabinet.

If you need live interaction, gaming in particular, sometimes VDSL in ideal conditions, with a better ISP can be a superior experience, top line speed isn’t everything. However, Sky isn’t always a great ISP… I’d rate several others, including the small ones like Digiweb, and (despite their horrible history of customer care) Eir is very well connected with a rock solid network. They’re only terrible if you fall foul of their customer service issue, which to be fair have been improving.

I wouldn’t move to VDSL / FTTC unless you can figure out what the actual speed would be though. It’s a bit of a throw of a dice otherwise.

Also check if FTTH is available at your address or is likely soon. If you see evidence of cable rollouts for example (they’re usually pretty obvious.) OpenEir and Siro are both rolling out a lot of fibre to home at the moment in most areas, both urban and rural. So you’d sometime be surprised what’s available if you haven’t looked for a long time and if you don’t have an OpenEir based service, you may not have been notified of FTTH rollouts on their network.

FishOnABike

If you current TV and soundboard are working fine why are you even taking the cost of replacing them into consideration. They are likely to continue to work fine for years.

Just considering broadband, what is your best option?

Nowso

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120914944#Comment_120914944

i get wanting to switch to get a deal but going to vdsl over cable internet is not really an option . Do a deal or cut back your tv package . until other viable internet is available

CalamariFritti

I switched last year from 100Mbits DSL to FTTH 500MBits.

Overall it didnt really affect me much but then I dont have kids hogging the line doing godknowswhat all day and night.

Basically large downloads take 2 minutes instead of 7 or such. Not really life changing. Was plenty of speed for Netflix etc before and still is now obviously.

Two things improved quite a bit though:

a) Stability, Used to have hassle every now and then with downtimes. Usually because someone did maintenance at the cabinet, I suspect connecting a new customer and disconnecting me instead or just fkn things up in some way. No downtime in first year with ftth at all.

b) Pings. This is really only affecting gaming but obviously important of you or family members are into that. My pings for example to EA servers EU (Frankfurt) went from low 100s, say 120ms to 140ms to something like 30ms. That is quite an improvement and enhances gaming experience a good bit. Especially with shooters where all things being equal the ping is the difference between being the fragger and fragee.

bk

"I switched last year from 100Mbits DSL to FTTH 500MBits."

I think it is worth stressing that peoples experience of VDSL can differ depending on what speed they can get. VDSL is "upto" 100Mb/s but it can be as low as 7Mb/s ! The speed you get depends on how far from the VDSL cabinet you are.

For instance my parents actually get 100Mb/s from their VDSL as the cab is literally on the outside wall of their house 5 meters away. Very good experience, they would see only a minor benefit upgrading to FTTH.

On the other hand my sister could only get 11Mb/s or so from her VDSL, that was a torturous experience. To put that in context, a single HD video stream (youtube, Netflix) uses about 10Mb/s, while a 4k stream is normally about 15Mb/s to 20Mb/s

As a result a couple of kids trying to stream video at the same time is going to lead to lots of stopped video, stuttering, loading screens and lots of shutting and unhappiness.

Needless to say it was a very happy day when FTTH came to my sisters area and she was able to upgrade to that.

Also keep in mind Sky Glass is a streaming service too, so when using it, it is going to be taking that 10 to 20mb/s of bandwidth from your VDSL connection!

OP, I suspect your son would be very unhappy if you downgrade from FTTH to VDSL.

BTW The Sky Glass TV and soundbar are pretty much the lowest quality no name TV and soundbar available. They are poorly reviewed. They might well still be better then a 5 year old TV, but not guaranteed depending on the model you currently have.

CalamariFritti

@bk

True, should have clarified. I am very close to the cabinet around 100m and I got pretty much the most out of it. Downloads of about 11MB/s and sometimes a touch more almost 12MB/s. Considering 100Mb/s divided by 8 plus some protocol overhead thats about as good as it gets.

11Mb/s is very poor for VDSL probably better off with ADSL. Thats just around 2MB/s and barely enough for HD streaming alright.

BlackEdelweiss

Thanks everyone. I think I will stay with what I have for now. I will try to get virgin to give me a bit of a discount if I threaten to leave, usually works.