20/2 vs 20/20

[bxm]

Good day everyone

Does anyone have experience with both 20/2 and 20/20 or 50/5 and 50/50, etc.?

How much of a difference does it make to have upload and download at the same speed?

We will mostly be using the connection for streaming Netflix, Showmax, YouTube, music, etc. and the occasional bit of online gaming - not that much for uploading files and torrenting.

At most I think we will have 4 devices streaming something and 2 smartphones that might be busy doing phone things in the background (updating stuff and uploading photos to the cloud etc.).

Thank you for any advice!

 

[XperiAnce]

My Fibre history is:

50/5
50/50
20/20
20/2

I feel the difference between 50 and 20 when it comes to large downloads (Xbox Live / PSN) - however, Netflix and streaming between 50/20 has zero difference.

As for upload, unless you're a content creator (YouTube), or work in an industry that requires heavy uploading (graphic / 3d design), there's no real point in a massive upload speed.

Edit: This is in a household with a maximum of 3 devices doing something at any one time.

 

[bxm]

My Fibre history is:

50/5
50/50
20/20
20/2

I feel the difference between 50 and 20 when it comes to large downloads (Xbox Live / PSN) - however, Netflix and streaming between 50/20 has zero difference.

As for upload, unless you're a content creator (YouTube), or work in an industry that requires heavy uploading (graphic / 3d design), there's no real point in a massive upload speed.

Edit: This is in a household with a maximum of 3 devices doing something at any one time.

Thank you for the feedback! Just to verify - you are currently on 20/2, right?

 

[Dark Agent]

My History is:
20/20 to 100/10 to 50/50.

My experience, I need upload speed to be quick, I was dying at 10(I really don't know how I survived ADSL 4/0.5). I make daily backup to the cloud. My household use 3 Devices- 2 Full HD and 1 UHD at the same time.

I found 20/20 to be perfect, I decided to upgrade to 50/50 to save an hour of waiting(Downloading Development Tools and upgrades). I also got 2 IP camera's running, 2 Raspberry Pi Servers and one Internal 4TB Storage(Sync to cloud).

For your needs try 20Mbps/20Mbps and after a month jump 50/5 and decide from there. I'll say its worth the extra R50-R100. Having fast upload speeds will allow better Video Calling, fast attachment uploading, can start making backups to cloud......

 

[rawoke]

Ja i'm very cheap ! 10 Mbps down on OpenServe and ISPAfrika. Works for a one person household

 

[Valerion]

I'd rather pay the few bucks extra for a symmetric link, if I have the option. A few issues that helped me make the decision:

• You always upload. Every few packets have to be acknowledged, and if the ACK is missing the remote side have to retransmit. This becomes more important at higher speeds, and I have seen figures of 1:10 being the minimum before.
• Many sites these days are interactive, transferring data between your browser and the server, and if your upload bandwidth is saturated already, this will suffer.
• Online gaming may also consume significant amounts of upload bandwidth, though there are other considerations there
• Obviously you need more upload bandwidth if you want to do streaming, or upload videos to sites, or similar. Or a member of your family wants to.
• If you live in the cloud, like many people start to do, and frequently use Google Drive/Dropbox/etc, or have auto-uploads (Google Photos or some other local service), then it helps a lot to have higher upload speeds.

Personally, I also want to eventually broadcast security webcams from my house as part of a smart home strategy. But that is MUCH down the road, once I have some technical issues sorted out.