OT Fibre connection

Although large downloads aren't necessarily a lot quicker if the source has a slow connection, slow server or many users.

Additionally, a fast internet connection could be throttled by a slow wifi connection to your router - particularly if a number of devices are sharing it.

When both of us were using Zoom - for different events - we used to get an "intrnet running slow" (or some such. nothing like that now.

and, as I discovered, by an old CAT5 cable.

There are two aspects to comms.

Speed Latency (flight time, some of which is going through routing equipment)

You can be given a 1Gbs fiber and still have high latency.

If your ISP are scumbags, you can also have "per-service filtering". That means Netflix really should have been able to run 4K resolution, but when the Netflix packets enter the ISP network, a 2Mbit/sec bandwidth cap is put only on the Netflix traffic. This causes bad-looking Netflix, when you paid for better.

For straight-up bulk transfer, TCP/IP is pipelined and you don't have to wait for an ACK before sending the next packet. This is what helps you extract the maximum value from your new service. If Microsoft agrees to run their server interface at a full 1Gbit/sec towards you, then your updates are "screaming fast". Of course, it does not work that way.

Try downloading an ISO off archive.org some time, if you want slow.

However, the "session" during a web page visit, involves a large number of IP addresses, plus DNS lookups of them. This requires some amount of unavoidable round-trip latency. If the latency is 70msec versus more modern 20msec, this makes a big difference to how fast a web page can load.

If you have 80/20 service, you've already got most of what you want from a speed perspective. If the latency of the 1000/1000 was just as bad as the 80/20 (which it is not), you might not notice any improvement at all while web surfing. If the Netflix is "capped" by the ISP, again, no improvement.

If PON or GPON wasn't involved, there might be a "straighter path" for the packet part of it. The latency could be slightly lower. You would need someone to use speedtest.net or similar, to measure some of these things for you -- as long as they're on the same CO you're on (the building most likely to be terminating the fiber signal).

For example, my service at a lower rate, is "backhauled" to a distant city and terminated there. Which gives a relatively high latency.

My ping right now is 14 milliseconds. This is a ping off a box inside the ISP building. We don't know which building, either. And the number may not be representative of how long a DNS takes to resolve either. It would take a lot of work, to characterize the slower web page accesses.

At one time, my ping was 70 milliseconds, and apparently as a Canadian, my traffic was going to New York state. This means, if I wanted to send a packet to the guy next door, and he is on my ISP, the packet would go all the way to New York state, turn around, and come back (telecom equipment does not support "local routing", it goes all the way to the hub). Which is ridiculous as a routing scheme.

It's really hard to tell exactly what speedtest.net is measuring and whether it is meaningful for real purposes.

You can do this, to characterize a path in Windows. Trace route.

tracert

and the hops shows the routing being done to get there.

For IPTV and multiple digital TV sets, you might get some of the benefit from the enlarged pipe, just from that aspect. But for doing downloads, your 80 is already pretty damn good.

You can try the following, for slow nodes. This will dump some.file in the current working directory.

aria2c.exe

A person with gigabit service, is much more likely to be using aria2c.exe than I am, precisely because they get cheated out of their snappy performance on everything they do.

You will also need a damn good router, if paying for gigabit service. My current routing device, has just exactly enough performance to handle my 15Mbit/sec service and not an ounce more. I would need a router which is 60x faster, if buying the better service. Some of these use multi-core ARM running at 1.5GHz or faster. Older routers might be MIPS running at 100MHz.

This is all part of the game - not being able to tell exactly what the extra money buys. We hope it's better, but if Netflix filtering is going on, sometimes that ruins the experience entirely for people. What goes on, is not exactly a level playing field.

Paul

aria2c

Each server has a "max connections".

It's a shocker to me, that the "max connections" is set as high as it is, on the server end. They are a lot higher than they should be. Why, a 1Gb/sec service user, could almost get their moneys worth if they aren't careful.

By using byte-range transfers, each connection downloads a section of the source file. The bits are bolted together to make the output file.

YoutubeDL does stuff like this too. Multiple connections. Byte ranges. At least, until Google finds a way to interfere.

Paul

I have a 10/40Mbps link. I actually get 11/34Mbps mostly. Against clean servers of quality that's what the true download speed is Only time it feels a bit slow is massive GB sized uploads/downloads.

Some sites are massively slower though

Yup there still are lower speed offerings available, but many of the ISPs that specialise in "ultrafast" services promote the higher tiers without mentioning the lower ones.

For example when IDNet started doing FTTP, they focussed on the services that were 160/20 and higher.

They now have split out the offerings into separate "superfast" and "ultrafast" sections. The "super" versions includes the lower end products.

e.g

The short answer is yes - but how much depends on circumstances.

As with the car you might not be able to use the top speed often, but you can enjoy the better acceleration and handling that come as part of the package.

So even if your download is "server side" limited to less than half your link speed, you can download from more than one source at a time.

Generally the "interference" between competing demands from the service also decrease (e.g. a large file transfer is less likely to glitch audio or video traffic)

Lastly, a step up in performance can open up complete new capabilities that were not even viable before, allowing new ways of working.

That was a question I asked. A large download never got close to my quoted (and tested) maximum speed. Suggesting it was 'throttled' elsewhere.

No - this computer pair which is cabled. And nothing else running - unless a TV etc with a Wi-Fi connection but switched off does things in the background. But if that were the case, I'd not see the download test figures I get either?

Only in phablet-sized chunks

Whatever it'll always get throttled to the upstream speed of the connection the server it's coming from is.

I once ftp'd a big file from a friend of mine. We are both on 80/20 FTTC connections, so his file arrived at about 18 Mb/s

They won't be replacing mine, unless they are going to rip up all the grass verges and everyones open-plan front gardens.

There are some public servers where the throttling is deliberate and not directly related to capacity (i.e. in the interests of serving more customers concurrently without those with particularly fast connections saturating their bandwidth).

Some software download managers can extract more performance from them by opening multiple concurrent sessions and each downloading a part of the file.

I downloaded a large ISO this morning from

John

I can believe that. However, I suspect that there will still be a large amount of copper circuits still requiring repair. The ones round here are on their last legs which may be why we were given full fibre.

It reached a point where they were breaking one previously working circuit for every two repairs that they did.

That is what they did in my village but that was to actually install a replacement real copper cable in trunking as opposed to one corroded to hell and nibbled by rats and buried loose in the waterlogged clay soil.

They even cut through my concrete road access (fairly neatly) but it now has a nasty different shade of repair concrete gouge across it.

They did it right when my daffodils were in full flower. They have yet to recover from the trauma many have been blind since that event.

Being able to stream more than one video link and have it remain stable is a major benefit for me. During lockdown and on ADSL we had to be careful to schedule our meetings so that they didn't overlap. That or run one of them off a phone or Mifi mobile data allowance.

Most notably Win 11 practically assumes fast full fibre connections since its updates are frequent and often huge.

Having a fast uplink makes online services and cloud backups a realistic proposition which isn't the case with either 448k or 1M uplink speeds.

This is my experience. I've never had any download that got even close to my maximum speed.

Of course if you have lots of simultaneous users, a very fast speed may help. But the adverts all seem to say a very fast connection is better at all times.

Well yes, transferring between two home FTTC connections you're always going to get less than 20 Mbps in either direction.

Even over wifi, I get a pretty constant 77 Mbps downloading a linux .iso file from a uk mirror

Try this, see what speed you get.