How Fast Will The Internet Become?

Are we getting 5 gigabit internet - or even faster speeds - in the near future?

FOLLOW US ELSEWHERE
---------------------------------------------------

[Tjulfar]

Don't worry. 20 M/bit is still pretty darn solid in Germany.

[jarboer]

The plan my family has is still 25 Mbps, we've been on this for like 7 years at this point. It's still the lowest tier our ISP offers. They go up to 1 Gbps now (it's been a few years) but haven't changed their lowest tier. It's really expensive though where I live in Ontario, and we really only have one ISP so they can charge whatever they want, at least it is fiber internet.

[DanielKatundu-yt]

Wow... At the time of writing, here in Malawi we are still wrestling with 1 Mbps at roughly $13 per month (with a data cap of 50GBs) while the fastest package is set at $120 for a speed of 15 Mbps.

[boussIRL]

I'd love to have this discussion when everyone actually has access to decent Internet plans. Places with only one ISP or places with 5 mbps or lower (my parent's house only having 1 to 3 mbps) are so far away from experiencing great speeds it's not even funny 💀😭

[Sacto]

The problem: download speeds over 512 megabits per second for home use is reaching the point of diminishing returns. This is due to many web hosting sites not really designed for this type of high-speed Internet connection.

[ShaderKite]

"Low-end is 200 Mbps"
"Average speed is 200 Mbps"

Sadly not in Germany :(
The highest available option for the house I live in is 175 mbps for 55 € per month :/

And according to the details for this option:
"Max 175/40
Avg 145/30
Min 105/20"

[SailioNation]

I work for an ISP and we are transitioning to all fiber to modem. We offer up to 10Gbps symmetrical speeds. 5Gbps symmetrical for residential

[pvbuerkner]

"200 = low end" excuse me what? xD I'm not even able to get 50mbit

[TheBardOfTheRedHand]

Important to note, when they say that "most devices are already 10G capable" this is true with caveats. The "backbone" or core of many ISPs is already in the multi-hundreds of gigabits, and for some already reaching terabits. This sounds impressive but due to the scale of an ISP network, speeds and capacity quickly scale down due to cost constraints. The good news is that with new standards like 802.3ca carriers are able to take practices they have been using in their core and longhaul for years and push them down into more regional networks, but again that only helps if you already have fiber; a point this video seems to skim over which impacts a lot of the rural tech world.

The last mile always poses a challenge, especially in copper plant based locations (think really spread out burbs or rural areas). New housing and business developments get around this by running fiber at the time of construction, but older established areas often suffer from the decaying infrastructure (CAT3 patch panels and crossboxes for example) Copper has a very limited range when compared with long haul fiber and multi-wavelength CW/DWDM, often topping out at 5000 M (16, 404 ft). This poses challenges for areas with aging, and often times willfully neglected, infrastructure.

Overall this was a great high level look at an interesting topic!

[AvengedKyle]

I work as a technician, I can indeed say some people put their routers in “silly” locations. For example, went to one house where the customer was saying they had bad internet speed everywhere in the house. I do my normal thing and check everything outside. Everything seems fine. Ask them to show me to their Modem and Router. Leads me to the master Bedroom. I have never seen so many mirrors in my life. The entire room was just mirrors. I test their speeds, as soon as you leave the room. Drops to 5mbps. Definitely knew as soon as I walked in the room, that was the problem.

[jonkeau]

My problem with high-speed Internet is not that I wanted to go faster, my problem is that most legacy broadband providers have data caps. The cloud services I used to send my video to clients are far slower than my max connection speed for uploading, however I was always blowing through data caps… Right now I have T-Mobile in home Internet and they have no data caps or throttling

[spky]

Short answer to the question: "Never quite fast enough to support all the user demand and eliminate dropouts". Very similar to PC speed vs software requirements for flawless running.

[mikesmith]

It’s incredible that internet speeds are becoming faster than SATA 6 HDD’s

[davidmccarthy]

As mentioned, I'm much more interested in them improving upload speed now that everything is uploading to a cloud, backing up to a cloud, etc.

[moondust]

Techquickie: *"10 years ago* having a 20 megabit internet connection was pretty solid, but *these days* it seems like *200* megabits (or 10 times faster) is on the *low end* of what many ISPs offer..."

Me in the Philippines: *10 Mbps internet in 2022*

[victorrobles]

"200 is on the LOW end" us with 2 megs a year ago and had only 75 megs only now

[TickoGrey]

Me with top internet speeds as high as 2 MBPS: 😭😭😳😳

[doujinflip]

I remember in Nigeria about 5 years ago how having over 3 Mbps (yes only mega) was considered a huge blessing. Granted the very libertarian environment allowed ISPs to charge whatever they wanted and dropped your connection whenever they felt like, not to mention the local gangs literally digging up the lines either for scrap theft (doesn't matter if it was fiber) or even as organized plots of sabotaging the competition.

[michaelgarcia]

I work as a business technician for a large ISP and they're still using coax running DOCSIS 3.1, which supports around 920 down and 40 up realistically, a pretty good jump from DOCSIS 3.0 which usually got to around 300 down. However when it comes to FTTH we currently have ONTS running off of fiber and they usually can get up to around a gig up and down. They are starting to push out 10 Gig ONTs to the field currently and plan on upgrading soon. Even then, if DOCSIS 4.0 comes out soon, it can provide much better upload speeds over coax (upwards of 300-400 mbps) which means coax will still survive for the near future.

[antiisocial]

AT&T just started offering 5 gig fiber residential service in certain areas of the US. They've been offering symmetrical 1 gig for a while now.