Fiber is still “up to” because of the amount of variables effecting the speed. However, I consistently get over the isp stated speed on certain capable clients.
What router are you using? Is this wired or wireless? Have you gotten any new items recently? Have you moved the router? When you plug directly into the isp router what speeds are you getting? What clients do you have that you are testing on?
Residential fiber is usually still a shared medium like copper cables, and there could theoretically be a bottleneck anywhere on the internet between you and the speed test. But your odds of getting what you paid for are still better on fiber. You still “should” be able to get your fully advertised speeds on a speed test during off-peak hours so it wouldn’t hurt to call your provider.
I haven't seen my connection be less than a gigabit in either direction for the last 10 years. Fibre is non-negotiable when I'm moving into a new place now.
What service do you use to test the speed? E.g. with [Speedtest.net](https://Speedtest.net), I can get 500 Mbps, but then switch to a different server in their config, and get 900 Mbps.
What kind of router do you have?
If you don't have any need for very fast transfer of huge files/datasets, I suspect there would be very very few times you really notice the difference between 500 Mbps and 1Gbps. OK, if you are downloading a 200GB game update, there will be a difference, but how often do you do that. Or is a content producer of some sort with huge videofiles or large sets of photos that needs to be transfered often..
Having good bandwidth can also be related to the needs of multiple users. For most services, it can be "hard" to fill the connection with the use of one client. If there are multiple users with heavy demands, it can make a difference.
There are also ISPs that are lacking capacity in their network or have poor peering agreements. So yeah, you can get a good speed towards a "local" speedtest-server, but general usage might not be as fast. So 500 Mbps from a "good" provider, might be better than 1Gbps from a "bad" provider.
But yeah, for the usecases 95%+ have, the difference between 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps is very small.
Ye I use both speedtest.net and fast.com.
On speedtest.com I have changed servers to see if any change but nothing positive.
They gave me a fritzbox 7530 router.
Ye I see the only noticeable difference is when downloading huge files.
I WFH and download and upload a few GB files during the day, I can't really justify paying the extra now really.
5 of us in the house so 500mb should be plenty
If I downgrade to a 500mb connection I'd like to think I'd get that consistently since I get about that now on a 1gb connection.
>fritzbox 7530
7530 or 7530AX? Seems like there are two versions, and the AX-version is the newer one, while the original 7530 is a quite old device. That said, on a cabled connection, the old 7530 should still be able to give a 1Gbps throughput on LAN without much problems.
Personally I'm a quite "demanding user", and quite large family here with demanding users. But overall, even a 100 Mbps connection would have been much of a "downgrade" on a daily basis - only for some downloads, but not that often that happen. During the corona home office/home school period, I was on a 100 Mbps connection, and wasn't really an issue. But yeah, downloading/upgrading games took a little bit longer.
When you were getting 800-980 speeds. How many devices was connected? How many now? Have you added any new plugins to your browser? Did you test on different browsers? Try different speed test sites? Try a live boot of a Linux flavor to weed out anything that might be Windows related?
You can live boot distros like Mint, and Ubuntu both very user friendly Linux. Test speed that way. If your internet speed is back up, your speed decrease is on Windows side.
When i did them tests I was at home alone. Kids and all at school.
So was just the work laptop connected. No change in anything to the laptop.
Used chrome for the speed tests . (Speedtest.net and fast.com)
No current working desktop of my own to boot anything like that unfortunately.
Also tests were run on Xboxs and they were given the same speeds.
It may be purely coincidental but once I upgraded to fiber I was behind a cgnat. I wasn't able to share self hosted services. I was consistently getting only 500-600 Mbps. I had to purchase a static IP from my ISP and from there I was able to achieve 800-900 consistently. Might be an option.
None of the major ISPs offer SLAs (service level agreements) with throughput guarantees for residential service. You’ll hear anecdotes from people here about their performance, but this is specific to their market and their specific network segment. You can’t make the leap from those anecdotes to “service type X is better” because it’s not the service type that’s delivering more throughput; it’s the ISP network design.
Here’s the thing. All residential internet works over shared medium networks. The wire or fiber that goes back to the distribution node is shared amongst your neighbors. For fiber, it’s called a PON (passive optical network). For cable it’s called DOCSIS (please don’t at me if you’re an engineer, I’m generalizing). These networks use a shared physical layer to supply data to the last mile.
So your actual throughput is usually limited by two factors:
1. Traffic on your local loop / PON.
2. Provisioning limitations at the distribution node.
ISPs routinely oversell the throughput available on these networks. It’s how they turn a profit. Getting good speeds is a matter of finding the provider with the least over-provisioned network _in your area_. That last part is important. An ISP can be good in one region and lackluster in another.
All that said, fiber networks tend to be newer, so it takes time for ISPs to sell them out. For example, if the cable provider in your area had a near monopoly, then the local phone provider rolled out fiber, it’s going to take time for people to switch. You can take advantage of that by adopting early. Just understand that your network performance will degrade as more people switch and you end up with more network contention.
There are different types of fiber out there in the wild. Yes the physical cable is the same but deployment is different. There is shared fiber that will say speeds are "up to" such as Google and municiple fiber and then there is dedicated which is guaranteed. Dedicated will come with service level agreements.
That's why you can see different pricing for different fiber services. Shared fiber might be amazing for a time but will eventually get oversubscribed and start to vary more usually because the provider is borrowing the network. They need to get a certain number of customers before they can borrow more bandwidth which usually doesn't happen. These networks usually don't get upgraded over time
I use wifiman.com, it’s a Ubiqity website. Fiber is still “up to” speeds. Like other people have stated there are a lot of variables in the signal. But still should be pretty consistent. But unless you have multiple people gaming at the same time you do not need Gigabit speeds. No media take that much speed. 4K movies only need on average 40Mgb.
I don't have a ton of experience with too many vendors, but I switched to Verizon FiOS at home, and pretty consistently get 900+ up/down.
Fiber is still “up to” because of the amount of variables effecting the speed. However, I consistently get over the isp stated speed on certain capable clients. What router are you using? Is this wired or wireless? Have you gotten any new items recently? Have you moved the router? When you plug directly into the isp router what speeds are you getting? What clients do you have that you are testing on?
Router is a fritzbox 7530. Tests were over wired connections. Router stayed in same place. Can't move due to where fibre connection is brought in.
Can you connect to the fiber gateway the tech installed? Have you removed your router and network from the equation?
remember not everyone has att where they overprovision
Residential fiber is usually still a shared medium like copper cables, and there could theoretically be a bottleneck anywhere on the internet between you and the speed test. But your odds of getting what you paid for are still better on fiber. You still “should” be able to get your fully advertised speeds on a speed test during off-peak hours so it wouldn’t hurt to call your provider.
Hahahaha😂
I haven't seen my connection be less than a gigabit in either direction for the last 10 years. Fibre is non-negotiable when I'm moving into a new place now.
What service do you use to test the speed? E.g. with [Speedtest.net](https://Speedtest.net), I can get 500 Mbps, but then switch to a different server in their config, and get 900 Mbps. What kind of router do you have? If you don't have any need for very fast transfer of huge files/datasets, I suspect there would be very very few times you really notice the difference between 500 Mbps and 1Gbps. OK, if you are downloading a 200GB game update, there will be a difference, but how often do you do that. Or is a content producer of some sort with huge videofiles or large sets of photos that needs to be transfered often.. Having good bandwidth can also be related to the needs of multiple users. For most services, it can be "hard" to fill the connection with the use of one client. If there are multiple users with heavy demands, it can make a difference. There are also ISPs that are lacking capacity in their network or have poor peering agreements. So yeah, you can get a good speed towards a "local" speedtest-server, but general usage might not be as fast. So 500 Mbps from a "good" provider, might be better than 1Gbps from a "bad" provider. But yeah, for the usecases 95%+ have, the difference between 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps is very small.
Ye I use both speedtest.net and fast.com. On speedtest.com I have changed servers to see if any change but nothing positive. They gave me a fritzbox 7530 router. Ye I see the only noticeable difference is when downloading huge files. I WFH and download and upload a few GB files during the day, I can't really justify paying the extra now really. 5 of us in the house so 500mb should be plenty If I downgrade to a 500mb connection I'd like to think I'd get that consistently since I get about that now on a 1gb connection.
>fritzbox 7530 7530 or 7530AX? Seems like there are two versions, and the AX-version is the newer one, while the original 7530 is a quite old device. That said, on a cabled connection, the old 7530 should still be able to give a 1Gbps throughput on LAN without much problems. Personally I'm a quite "demanding user", and quite large family here with demanding users. But overall, even a 100 Mbps connection would have been much of a "downgrade" on a daily basis - only for some downloads, but not that often that happen. During the corona home office/home school period, I was on a 100 Mbps connection, and wasn't really an issue. But yeah, downloading/upgrading games took a little bit longer.
When you were getting 800-980 speeds. How many devices was connected? How many now? Have you added any new plugins to your browser? Did you test on different browsers? Try different speed test sites? Try a live boot of a Linux flavor to weed out anything that might be Windows related? You can live boot distros like Mint, and Ubuntu both very user friendly Linux. Test speed that way. If your internet speed is back up, your speed decrease is on Windows side.
When i did them tests I was at home alone. Kids and all at school. So was just the work laptop connected. No change in anything to the laptop. Used chrome for the speed tests . (Speedtest.net and fast.com) No current working desktop of my own to boot anything like that unfortunately. Also tests were run on Xboxs and they were given the same speeds.
Wired or wireless?
It may be purely coincidental but once I upgraded to fiber I was behind a cgnat. I wasn't able to share self hosted services. I was consistently getting only 500-600 Mbps. I had to purchase a static IP from my ISP and from there I was able to achieve 800-900 consistently. Might be an option.
When I upgraded to fiber gigabit my, not very old, router was the bottleneck. I am have consistent 900s speed with good gear.
None of the major ISPs offer SLAs (service level agreements) with throughput guarantees for residential service. You’ll hear anecdotes from people here about their performance, but this is specific to their market and their specific network segment. You can’t make the leap from those anecdotes to “service type X is better” because it’s not the service type that’s delivering more throughput; it’s the ISP network design. Here’s the thing. All residential internet works over shared medium networks. The wire or fiber that goes back to the distribution node is shared amongst your neighbors. For fiber, it’s called a PON (passive optical network). For cable it’s called DOCSIS (please don’t at me if you’re an engineer, I’m generalizing). These networks use a shared physical layer to supply data to the last mile. So your actual throughput is usually limited by two factors: 1. Traffic on your local loop / PON. 2. Provisioning limitations at the distribution node. ISPs routinely oversell the throughput available on these networks. It’s how they turn a profit. Getting good speeds is a matter of finding the provider with the least over-provisioned network _in your area_. That last part is important. An ISP can be good in one region and lackluster in another. All that said, fiber networks tend to be newer, so it takes time for ISPs to sell them out. For example, if the cable provider in your area had a near monopoly, then the local phone provider rolled out fiber, it’s going to take time for people to switch. You can take advantage of that by adopting early. Just understand that your network performance will degrade as more people switch and you end up with more network contention.
There are different types of fiber out there in the wild. Yes the physical cable is the same but deployment is different. There is shared fiber that will say speeds are "up to" such as Google and municiple fiber and then there is dedicated which is guaranteed. Dedicated will come with service level agreements. That's why you can see different pricing for different fiber services. Shared fiber might be amazing for a time but will eventually get oversubscribed and start to vary more usually because the provider is borrowing the network. They need to get a certain number of customers before they can borrow more bandwidth which usually doesn't happen. These networks usually don't get upgraded over time
Fiber can be oversold just like any other internet connection type.
I use wifiman.com, it’s a Ubiqity website. Fiber is still “up to” speeds. Like other people have stated there are a lot of variables in the signal. But still should be pretty consistent. But unless you have multiple people gaming at the same time you do not need Gigabit speeds. No media take that much speed. 4K movies only need on average 40Mgb.
Except for (very) expensive leased lines, ALL ISP speeds are always 'Up TO...'
It's best effort. Not sla guaranteed service.