Do I need synchronous fibre?

N

Neville

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2006
Messages
274
Reaction score
44
Location
Cape Town
2 person family. We watch Netflix and Youtube most nights. I don't play online games but will download games and patches from the Xbox store. I am a software developer so sometimes work from home, connecting to our office VPN and often having multiple RDP sessions open, connecting to databases etc. I'd also often Skype or Slack and have live screen sharing chats with other developers.

As typically something like a 20/2 line is fairly cheaper than a 20/20 line - do I really need the fast upload speeds? Or is that more for realtime gaming?
 
At 2Mbps upload the actual upload speed is around 210KB/s vs 20Mbps upload and an actual upload speed of 2.1MB/s.

It depends on what you do really. If you upload videos, photos and other content to the cloud or to a remote server 2Mbps might be a bit slow. Remember that uploading at max speed will also slow down the download speed a bit.

Why not try the 20/2 first and if you notice problems just upgrade to the 20/20.
 
The problem is that the cheaper 20/2 options is at one ISP and the 20/20 at another. The ISP with 20/20 does not offer 20/2 and the ISP with 20/2 would be a lot more expensive if I then upgraded to their 20/20 line.

My main concern for upload speed is my screen sharing chat/coding sessions - how much upload speed does it require to a have a nice smooth screen sharing chat session..?
 
2mbps upload won't work amazingly for live screen sharing with any sort of noticeable quality and bitrate. It's also too slow to enable quick database uploads for bigger files (like coding libraries for archiving etc) in the case of remote access. If you can afford the 20/20, I would recommend just going for that. I am in a similar situation to you in terms of use case and I typically pull 6-12mbps on the upload depending on what exactly I am doing.
 
Neville said:
2 person family. We watch Netflix and Youtube most nights. I don't play online games but will download games and patches from the Xbox store. I am a software developer so sometimes work from home, connecting to our office VPN and often having multiple RDP sessions open, connecting to databases etc. I'd also often Skype or Slack and have live screen sharing chats with other developers.

As typically something like a 20/2 line is fairly cheaper than a 20/20 line - do I really need the fast upload speeds? Or is that more for realtime gaming?
Click to expand...

Software Developer here :).

Been fully remote since 2017.

Can highly vouch for a higher upload speeds especially if you do video meetings. etc. If you do screensharing, you most certainly want 5mbps - 10mbps upwards, unless your coworkers are okay with your video that looks like it's filmed with a potato.

Also, you'll save some time when you
Code: 
git push
to Github/Gitlab or FTP some files to a remote server.

If Work From Home, Skype, Screensharing, uploading to cloud, wasn't a factor I'd say save the bucks... otherwise, that higher upload speed is almost a necessity.
 
ronald911 said:
Software Developer here :).

Been fully remote since 2017.

Can highly vouch for a higher upload speeds especially if you do video meetings. etc. If you do screensharing, you most certainly want 5mbps - 10mbps upwards, unless your coworkers are okay with your video that looks like it's filmed with a potato.

Also, you'll save some time when you
Code: 
git push
to Github/Gitlab or FTP some files to a remote server.

If Work From Home, Skype, Screensharing, uploading to cloud, wasn't a factor I'd say save the bucks... otherwise, that higher upload speed is almost a necessity.
Click to expand...
Ok, this is what I suspected...shot!
 
Neville said:
How do you check this? I'm on Windows...is the network stats tab on Task Manager's Performance tab any good for this?
Click to expand...
That performance tab works well for a very brief time snapshot of speeds. If you want something more detailed and long term, just search the criteria online and you should be able to find something. Either way, 20mbps upload is the safer bet :)
 
Who is your fibre provider? Can you not get an isp that offers both options?
 
Synchronous fibre is way better. I was on 20/2 and uploads to office server, etc were boring in the extreme. Much better now at 20/20. What used to take 15-20 minutes now takes 5.
 
Neville said:
2 person family. We watch Netflix and Youtube most nights. I don't play online games but will download games and patches from the Xbox store. I am a software developer so sometimes work from home, connecting to our office VPN and often having multiple RDP sessions open, connecting to databases etc. I'd also often Skype or Slack and have live screen sharing chats with other developers.

As typically something like a 20/2 line is fairly cheaper than a 20/20 line - do I really need the fast upload speeds? Or is that more for realtime gaming?
Click to expand...
I have a 20/2 with Vox and can upload photos and documents to Google Drive just fine with it. For me it's being able to game with reasonable latency overseas and being able to watch Netflix/Showmax/DSTV Now. That works well!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X