Fiber 20 or 50 or 100

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hjno72

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I got fiber 50/5 Mbps from Cool Ideas and things are fast, very fast.

However several speed test reversal that local I get 50/5 but international I get on average 25/3

Maybe the 20/2 Mbps is the sweet spot package. Anyone else have an opinion on this?
 
hjno72 said:
I got fiber 50/5 Mbps from Cool Ideas and things are fast, very fast.

However several speed test reversal that local I get 50/5 but international I get on average 25/3

Maybe the 20/2 Mbps is the sweet spot package. Anyone else have an opinion on this?
Click to expand...

It is across ISP's where international speed tests gives lower results. Believe the ISP's can explain the reason for this however. But it is a trend
 
hjno72 said:
I got fiber 50/5 Mbps from Cool Ideas and things are fast, very fast.

However several speed test reversal that local I get 50/5 but international I get on average 25/3

Maybe the 20/2 Mbps is the sweet spot package. Anyone else have an opinion on this?
Click to expand...

Fibre, not fiber. We use British English in SA, not American.

Personally I wouldn't need more than 20/2.

DERoestorf said:
It is across ISP's where international speed tests gives lower results. Believe the ISP's can explain the reason for this however. But it is a trend
Click to expand...

ISPs.
 
An ISP can pretty much deliver the advertised speed to local internet, mostly everyone cross connects locally at 1Gb/s or greater, so that's not a problem. The problem comes in when traffic leaves the DC and is dependant on whatever Northbound link the ISP has purchased. Mostly ISPs buy a GB/s connection, and let all their traffic share the pipe on a best effort basis. You can get a dedicated link to international sites, but be prepared to pay a lot.

The other thing that affects your international speed is the box you are connecting to. The local ISP, as well as the Northbound provider has no influence over what you connect to, how the ports are configured, what firewalls you may be transiting through, or any other of the multitude of factors that can affect the experience of you as the user.
 
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hjno72 said:
I got fiber 50/5 Mbps from Cool Ideas and things are fast, very fast.

However several speed test reversal that local I get 50/5 but international I get on average 25/3

Maybe the 20/2 Mbps is the sweet spot package. Anyone else have an opinion on this?
Click to expand...

Poor peering, deliberate rate limiting, link congestion. Many factors that influence the real world speeds.

Is your Fiber package advertised as 50/5 local and international or could it possibly be like 123Net and only give you the "advertised" speed locally?

I'd contact the provider and get their input.
 
Getting closer to 100mbps should be possible, assuming that nothing dodgy is afoot as MikeKee has mentioned.

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Haterade said:
Getting closer to 100mbps should be possible, assuming that nothing dodgy is afoot as MikeKee has mentioned.
Click to expand...

Windhoek to Stellenbosch isn't really international...

OP it's completely normal, you're not going to get full line speed to an international server. If you drop your package your international speed will drop too, it's not going to stay at 25/3.

As an example on a 20meg ADSL line I get 17/0.8 local and 14/0.8 international but my gap is smaller simply because my speed is lower, a 10-20% drop in speed local to international is about the norm. Your 50% drop though is pushing it a bit.
 
In terms of actual download speed, it depends on the capacity of the provider and distance.

Don't forget that TCP/IP diminishes in speed dramatically over distance. Unless you are using a multithreaded download, your international speeds will likely be quite disappointing - even over FTTH. Then, factor the capacity of the ISP itself - international bandwidth is scarce here in South Africa.

In terms of speed, I would always recommend either 50Mb or 100Mb, depending on how many people live in your home. I have a 50Mb acc. between three people and we never experience issues. We may upgrade to 100 in the future, but right now it feels... superfluous (even though we are very very media and download heavy). Once downloads of even the biggest Steam games reach minutes instead of hours, the difference between 50Mb and 100Mb starts to seem less compulsive than going from 10Mb ADSL to 50Mb FTTH like we did :p

Expect a MyBB article quite soon on my time with FTTH and my ideas about the ideal speed for a house...
 
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Some speedtest servers are multi threaded, I will post some of the ones I find so you can test to
 
paul5186 said:
Some speedtest servers are multi threaded, I will post some of the ones I find so you can test to
Click to expand...

Use beta.speedtest.net - you can search for servers in the settings.

UK server: Sevenoaks, Proxar IT Consulting (slightly south east of London)
Germany: Dusseldorf, cuegee it gmb
 
paul5186 said:
Use beta.speedtest.net - you can search for servers in the settings.

UK server: Sevenoaks, Proxar IT Consulting (slightly south east of London)
Germany: Dusseldorf, cuegee it gmb
Click to expand...

I get much better results via this.

Previously about 12Mb to london on my 50Mb line, now 30Mb on the dot.
 
hjno72 said:
I got fiber 50/5 Mbps from Cool Ideas and things are fast, very fast.

However several speed test reversal that local I get 50/5 but international I get on average 25/3

Maybe the 20/2 Mbps is the sweet spot package. Anyone else have an opinion on this?
Click to expand...

Hi hjno, we (Cool Ideas) see this trend as well, we get various results to various international servers. We use Seacom as our IP transit and they buy their upstream from all the Tier 1 providers and a couple Tier 2s.

As many have mentioned the TCP buffer scenario, so this is latency reliant.

Think of carrying a package from one point to the next, if the distance is small you can carry the same package quickly from one side to the next.

If the distance is far it takes long before you get back and get the next package, this is how TCP behaves.

Now where dynamic TCP buffer comes in is that the size of the package you are transporting increases in size dynamically and therefor you getting more from one side to the next.

Dynamic TCP Buffering is something that happens on the OS level, so Windows 7 was the first Windows OS to do this well.

On the network side if we see we are running at near international and local transit we up the capacity on either network, other transit links. Like to local peering locations we manage ourselves, we dont share these with other ISPs. And the same policy applies.

So 50Mbps is still a solution but 20Mbps might work just as well depending on your needs, which can be unique to the subscriber.
 
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Thanks guys some great insight. CoolIdeas coolios to u, would not have expected tend a response. Best ISP currently for fiber

To the spell checker you added no value to the question.
 
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