[THREAD] Can we talk about Internet services at home? Here's the trap many fall into when our telco and cablecos sell us super-fast fibre Internet:

The assumption that we 'need' 300, 500 megabit, or even 1 gigabit/s of Internet bandwidth in our homes.

The chart in my last tweet represents my own network throughput (purple=download) for the past 7 days. To be fair, these numbers are a bit low, due to the averaging of the data points —but even still⁠— it's obvious I don't need the 300Mb/s fibre I get from my telco.
[2/13]

So why do we buy big Internet plans? I think for the following few reasons:

1) Performance problems with our WiFi: Many will attribute poor performance to their Internet service— not their local network's own WiFi signals from their router. [3/13]

When calling carrier tech support for help with slow Internet, do you think their agent will mention this? Of course not— the crappy WiFi is probably caused by the provider's own ill-performing router! So here's what happens: they'll upgrade your Internet bandwidth and...
[4/13]

...the faster service likely came with a new/better router that improves the home WiFi through multiple devices.

See what happened?

The homeowner believes upgraded speed is the reason for the improved performance— not their crappy old router. It was the WiFi all along! [5/13]

2) Lack of data: The average homeowner has no idea how much realtime throughput their pushing over the network to their ISP.

So they're informed by ISP's ubiquitous advertising about an affordable 1 Gb fibre service to the home. It's exciting to have fibre! [6/13]

3) Unfounded examples (lies?): The scripts used by big cableco exaggerate the importance of bandwidth by presuming things like teens as big consumers of data: "Oh, you have 5 people in your family, including 3 teenagers? I'd definitely recommend our 500Mb service." [7/13]

4) Peace of mind: The same psychology happens when we choose mobile plans with higher data caps or "unlimited".
It's common for homeowners to think "I should get the faster service and lock-in so that *IF* my usage increases, I won't have to worry about performance." [8/13]

5) Limited special promotion!: this thread isn't about behavioural economics, but people love a deal and behave in a predictably irrational way when the carrier presents them with several plans and price points, combined with a promotion. The carriers use all these tricks. [9/13]

I know this probably won't change the behaviour of those of us over-paying for Internet bandwidth (heck, I overpay!), but here are a few things to consider if you're thinking about the ACTUAL bandwidth they might need from your ISP. [10/13]

Some popular services and their b/w needs:

Netflix 1080P HD ~6mb/s
Netflix 4K UHD ~25mb/s
Spotify 320k ~512Kb/s
Spotify lossless ~2mb/s
Zoom video ~1.5mb/s*
Nest security camera ~1.2mb/s
Online gaming ~3mb/s*

*=realtime services are heavily reliant on low-latency.

[11/13]

Let's say we have a household a mom, dad, and 3 kids and:
- Mom is watching Netflix ~25mb/s
- Dad is watching Netflix ~6mb/s
- 3 kids are listening to Spotify ~2mb/s x 3
- all 3 kids are online gaming ~3mb/s x 3
- 5 nest cameras protect the house ~1.2mb/s x 5
[12/13]

In my example, the minimum b/w required is ~52mb/s. I didn't include web browsing/video ads, etc, so let's round up to 60mb/s.

If the family has a 1,000mb/s service (1Gb/s), during their highest peak usage, they would only consume 6% of their bandwidth.

Now you know.
[/THREAD]

My friend @brundle_fly made a great point: the times when a 1Gb/s service shines⁠— when you rely on filesharing over the Internet and waiting costs money. His 1Gb/s service is also ~$100⁠— hard to argue against that price point, especially when your livelihood depends on it.

Semi-related, here's a Google Sheet to that illustrates how long a file of a certain size will take to download on a configurable speed of Internet service, or how much can be transferred over a configurable period of time. Feel free to make a copy: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1joUmKGeSMSotTcK5q8Y68WXp3V-_0_dVJBS-e80-ZIM/edit?usp=sharing