Yes, it's enough. Poor performance will come from things like poorly constructed websites (too much JS, very chatty sites and apps loading resources across many domains, or calling home a lot, especially with limited upstream bandwidth), contention with other users of the connection, and latency (not often a big issue with wired connections). On latency, this piece from 1996 is still worth a read: http://www.stuartcheshire.org/rants/latency.html.
Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
#12A counter point: not really.
Well of course you get by, but streaming a youtube video alone is pushing it so browsing simultaneously will suffer. And if you want to download something it gets even worse and takes quite some time.
This obviously only gets worse and worse if the connection is shared.
Yes, it works - but for a power user it is quite limiting. But why not try it and upgrade if need be?
Re: Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
#13Good enough? I find 100mb full duplex ethernet to be chaffing between my devices that don't support 1gbps. I rely on sneakernet a lot since I don't even have gb at work.
But if you don't have a lot of data needs you can get by on 10mbps, Netflix uses 5mbps for HD. You may find remote backup solutions painful though.
Re: Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
#14I live off of 1mbps, I'd LOVE 10mbps.
Re: Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
#15I've been living on a residential ftth connection, 10mbps/10mbps. It's good enough for three working people, that do not use Netflix. I also get to have a nice home server with a few services (including my own email with my own domain). I'd say it's enough if: - you also get 10mbps in upload - latency is in the range of an ftth connection
what is the need for 25mbps and 100 mbps connection for a home purpose ? is that an overkill ?
Re: Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
#16I have much less than that. I use 4G mobile for my internet access. Right now a speed test shows I'm getting 2.8Mbps down and 3.3Mbps up. I'm kinda out in the country, so my speed is slower than it could be in a city, but I don't think it's ever reliably over 10Mbps; sometimes I might see 12 or 13, but it is not reliably that fast anywhere I can recall.
I don't love my network being this slow, but I'm able to do most things without pain, including streaming Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/YouTube, though I often get the lower resolution versions of those streams. Latency is much more of an issue, for me...when it climbs, I find working difficult. I do a lot of my development on servers a few hundred miles away, because I can't realistically download a bunch of VM images or OS install ISOs and that's the kind of work I do, so having ssh be responsive is really important.
But, sure, faster is better. I don't like that our telcos in the US lag the rest of the modern world by at least a generation of tech. Average broadband speed to price ratio in the US is something like 14th in the world; embarrassing for the nation that did most of the innovation of the early internet. Likewise, we're way behind on mobile broadband accessibility, price, and performance.
Re: Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
#17I've been living on a residential ftth connection, 10mbps/10mbps. It's good enough for three working people, that do not use Netflix. I also get to have a nice home server with a few services (including my own email with my own domain). I'd say it's enough if: - you also get 10mbps in upload - latency is in the range of an ftth connection
what is the need for 25mbps and 100 mbps connection for a home purpose ? is that an overkill ?
Streaming 4k basically.
It's definitely optional. But if you look at what most bandwidth goes to, it's streaming video.
For games, latency now matters more. Bandwidth has just outstripped most use cases. Streaming HD music is trivial. Applications maybe, but how many days do you download something new? Eventually you have your setup.
I was hoping the hacker homes in gigabit areas would come up with some way to exploit the pipe, maybe Jevon's paradox would kick in. I'm not sure that's happening.
The upshot is it means fiber's speed advantage might not matter long term, and we can close the gap with 5g and have the last mile problem solved, increasing competition, quality and availability for broadband, while all our connections become portable.
Re: Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
#18Yes, it's enough. Poor performance will come from things like poorly constructed websites (too much JS, very chatty sites and apps loading resources across many domains, or calling home a lot, especially with limited upstream bandwidth), contention with other users of the connection, and latency (not often a big issue with wired connections). On latency, this piece from 1996 is still worth a read: http://www.stuartch…
thats still relevant. Every developer should take low bandwidth in mind.
Re: Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
#19I have much less than that. I use 4G mobile for my internet access. Right now a speed test shows I'm getting 2.8Mbps down and 3.3Mbps up. I'm kinda out in the country, so my speed is slower than it could be in a city, but I don't think it's ever reliably over 10Mbps; sometimes I might see 12 or 13, but it is not reliably that fast anywhere I can recall. I don't love my network being this slow, but I'm able to do most…
so 50mbps and 100 mbps are really overkill for home purposes
Re: Ask HN: Is 10mbps good enough in today's world?
#20I have much less than that. I use 4G mobile for my internet access. Right now a speed test shows I'm getting 2.8Mbps down and 3.3Mbps up. I'm kinda out in the country, so my speed is slower than it could be in a city, but I don't think it's ever reliably over 10Mbps; sometimes I might see 12 or 13, but it is not reliably that fast anywhere I can recall. I don't love my network being this slow, but I'm able to do most…
You may be interested in https://mosh.org/ as an alternative to ssh