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There's still no point in gigabit broadband

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Re: There's still no point in gigabit broadband

#11

Post by matja »

gambiting wrote: post #6

I work from home, and in video games. I download multiple 80-100GB builds every single day just to do my job. Virgin's 1.2Gbps connection is barely good enough. The moment they bring 2 or 3Gbps out on their nextfibre service I'll upgrade to it almost no matter the cost. I'm jealous of our European neighbours where you can get domestic 10Gbps connections. But beyond work - the ability to download any game from steam w…

Is that 80-100GB of unique data multiple times per day? Is it encrypted with a different key every time? Sounds very interesting.

Re: There's still no point in gigabit broadband

#12

Post by GauntletWizard »

Don't let your average usage fool you. You do notice the snappiness of downloading a large file and having it take a third to a tenth the time. You rarely manage to fully saturate a gigabit connection, but while downloading isos and software updates in seconds rather than minutes, your Internet stays snappy the whole time.

Yes, your overall usage of gigabit is only a few percent. It's way oversold anyway, so you could never use all of that. It's still way worth it for those short bursts of speed.

Re: There's still no point in gigabit broadband

#13

Post by kotaKat »

CarVac wrote: post #9

I figured 300 megabit Fios would be enough but I think that when you cheap out, they more severely throttle places like Youtube on the backend.

I started with gigabit Fios when they first deployed in my area then ended up dropping to 300. As a single user, even if I'm saturating the link, I think I'm too used to being patient to accept waiting an extra few minutes or queueing up an overnight download for something massive.

Every online service I've used has been flawless, from streaming media to cloud gaming, and I'm in a fully wireless house with a single Ruckus AP covering it all.

I've seen over a thousand+ devices being covered by a 2Gbps pipe on a large network and not even saturate the link even during peak - and they were throttled to 150mbps per device.

Re: There's still no point in gigabit broadband

#14

Post by matja »

fg137 wrote: post #10

If the author ever talked to a gamer, they would have learned how ignorant they are. edit: in case it's not clear, when every other new game from major publisher starts at 50GB or 100GB and can sometimes be 300+GB, waiting 2hrs to download it is terrible and horrible for energy use.

Please can you enlighten the ignorant that are also gamers? :)

Re: There's still no point in gigabit broadband

#16

Post by perching_aix »

When a game I play drops its monthly 30 gigabyte patch, and it downloads in 5 minutes rather than 50 minutes or more, I find it to have plenty enough of a point.

You could argue that waiting an hour once a month is not that much of a hurdle, sure, but in my judgement it is. I like this. I wish it could go even faster. I'm so happy that the era of waiting a substantial amount of time for data transfer is just ~not a thing anymore.

Though a gigabit subscription here is dirt cheap and always has been, so that helps too.

Re: There's still no point in gigabit broadband

#17

Post by scoot »

fg137 wrote: post #10

If the author ever talked to a gamer, they would have learned how ignorant they are. edit: in case it's not clear, when every other new game from major publisher starts at 50GB or 100GB and can sometimes be 300+GB, waiting 2hrs to download it is terrible and horrible for energy use.

Edit to recognise your edit, as you’ve clarified that were talking about downloads - a once a month experience.

That sounds more like a time management problem - buy your game, go to bed, and it’ll be there when you wake at 2:30 for your next gaming session. ;)

~You appear to be confusing latency and bandwidth. While they are to an extent two dimensions of the same problem, it’s latency that affects gaming regardless of bandwidth.

More bandwidth will not reduce latency, and gaming intentionally only uses limited bandwidth (notwithstanding streamed rendering, but that’s a minuscule minority).

You cannot defy the laws of physics.~

Re: There's still no point in gigabit broadband

#19

Post by bwat49 »

matja wrote: post #14
fg137 wrote: post #10

If the author ever talked to a gamer, they would have learned how ignorant they are. edit: in case it's not clear, when every other new game from major publisher starts at 50GB or 100GB and can sometimes be 300+GB, waiting 2hrs to download it is terrible and horrible for energy use.

Please can you enlighten the ignorant that are also gamers? :)

downloading a game on steam can fully utilize gigabit speeds, and modern games can be 100+gb

Re: There's still no point in gigabit broadband

#20

Post by gambiting »

matja wrote: post #11
gambiting wrote: post #6

I work from home, and in video games. I download multiple 80-100GB builds every single day just to do my job. Virgin's 1.2Gbps connection is barely good enough. The moment they bring 2 or 3Gbps out on their nextfibre service I'll upgrade to it almost no matter the cost. I'm jealous of our European neighbours where you can get domestic 10Gbps connections. But beyond work - the ability to download any game from steam w…

Is that 80-100GB of unique data multiple times per day? Is it encrypted with a different key every time? Sounds very interesting.

Yes. Our build system produces complete packages of the game, and I'm a platform engineer - so within one day I'll often download a PC package, one for PS5, Xbox, Switch, Android and iOS, depending on what kind of thing I'm working on. So yes all of them are completely unique. Or I'm looking at builds made for different backends. Or I pushed a preflight for overnight cooking/building, it takes about 8 hours - so I need to download the output to see if it works across different systems.
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