I Just Got a 100x Increase In Internet Speed

So for a couple years now I have been living in an apartment on the South Side of Chicago where it's safe to say Internet upgrades are a bit behind the times. My Internet hit various speeds depending on the time of day but in general I got about 120 Kbps. That's not even fast enough to stream a Youtube video. Well last week I moved back in with my parents while I get my finances under control. Unfortunately I didn't get my stuff from Chicago until today. So after a week I set up my consoles and my computer and decided I needed something to play. So I decided to download Stalker which I owned on Steam but hadn't ever played much of. I'm used to a 6 GB game taking a week or so to download at speeds of around 30 kbps. So when my download started and the speed read 3 MB a second I nearly died. I went in to ask my Mom why she had such a fast connection and she said AT&T offered to upgrade her connection for free for six months. She didn't know to what speed. So I did a speed test and the result was a massive 12 Mbps. Yes I got an amazing 100x increase in speeds. So I watched some videos, went on some forums and such and checked my download a half hour later expecting it to be at maybe 25% and low and behold it was already done. I now am looking at my 150 strong Steam game collection and not dreading downloading some of them. I also am a PSN Plus member so I can download all those full games and the full game trials without having to wait a week or two. Such a beautiful connection. At these speeds I could stream 1080p video. Yup no more waiting on Youtube for me. In fact no more waiting at all. For at least a couple months I'm going to download the heck out of things and it is going to be amazing.

So for a couple years now I have been living in an apartment on the South Side of Chicago where it's safe to say Internet upgrades are a bit behind the times. My Internet hit various speeds depending on the time of day but in general I got about 120 Kbps. That's not even fast enough to stream a Youtube video. Well last week I moved back in with my parents while I get my finances under control. Unfortunately I didn't get my stuff from Chicago until today. So after a week I set up my consoles and my computer and decided I needed something to play. So I decided to download Stalker which I owned on Steam but hadn't ever played much of. I'm used to a 6 GB game taking a week or so to download at speeds of around 30 kbps. So when my download started and the speed read 3 MB a second I nearly died. I went in to ask my Mom why she had such a fast connection and she said AT&T offered to upgrade her connection for free for six months. She didn't know to what speed. So I did a speed test and the result was a massive 12 Mbps. Yes I got an amazing 100x increase in speeds. So I watched some videos, went on some forums and such and checked my download a half hour later expecting it to be at maybe 25% and low and behold it was already done. I now am looking at my 150 strong Steam game collection and not dreading downloading some of them. I also am a PSN Plus member so I can download all those full games and the full game trials without having to wait a week or two. Such a beautiful connection. At these speeds I could stream 1080p video. Yup no more waiting on Youtube for me. In fact no more waiting at all. For at least a couple months I'm going to download the heck out of things and it is going to be amazing.

That's amazing! I'm just like you. My top download is about 120 kbs. I heard of Gbps. That's must be nice to have.

I was totally expecting a spambot by reading the title, but kudos duder. I'd kill to have that fast of a connection.

I don't consume enough media for me to need those kinds of speeds. Then again, no lag when playing Tribes would be all sorts of nice.

Enjoy your porn!

@SexyToad: I have no idea what you would need that for. The barrier for streaming 1080p video is 10 Mbps. I transfer tons of data on a daily basis as I work remotely and usually I spent half of my day simply waiting for files to transfer. Now I can transfer the same amount of data in a couple of minutes. If you ever have a chance you should upgrade to at least 6 Mbps.

@joshthebear: The highlight came when I was watching the Dwarf Fortress thing that Dave is doing and I couldn't make out anything on the screen. I thought I was just going to have to turn it off when suddenly I realized I could watch the video in HD. It was beautiful. I might go back and watch some earlier videos in HD and see how they look.

@adam1808: You are far beyond gaming needs at those speeds. Unless you are streaming the actual game in above 1080p then there is no use for a connection this fast unless you are a business of some sort. At these speeds I can transfer my entire game over the Internet in under 10 minutes. I know they have speeds going up to 50 Mbps in some areas but I just can't imagine what you could be doing that would require that type of speed. Maybe if you had a whole family doing things all at once. You could stream 5 1080p videos at once with those speeds. With just me and my parents there is literally no use for it. If my Mom was paying for it I would tell her to stop. But for free I might as well make use of it.

Yup. Had the same thing happen to me a few days ago. My folks live out in the boonies and the only thing that's out here is basically wireless dial-up. Would usually have a top speed of .5Mb (yes, that's 0.5, no error there) on speedtest. I moved out and got Comcast and absolutely love it. Finally I can download Shogun 2: Total War without waiting 3 or 4 days :D

I know that feel bro, feels good.

You know I'd think larger cities would actually have better internet speeds/infrastructure then smaller towns. I live in a big town/small city in West Texas and I get 1.2 Megabytes per sec(or MBs) on average. The max speed I've ever had was 4 MB per sec on Origin. I had that jump about 6 years ago when I was still in high school. Went from barely getting 100 Kbps to 1200 Kbps over night.

Rocking 2Mbps myself, I leave in a rural area of Canada and the worst part there is a bunch of Buddhist monks that are like 5 miles away from me and paid a million bucks so they could get Fibre op line (i.e 15-30 Mbps) installed to their houses and compound but the service provider won't expand to where I live or the town right next to me!

If you're getting a 3MB/s download speed then you have at least 24mbps connection, not 12 ;). 30kbps you claimed to get downloading games before is slower than Dial-Up and 120kbps is IDSN speeds. I'm sure you mean KB/s rather than kbps. And 120KB/s is enough to watch videos on YouTube (360p is generally ~60kb/s depending on bit rate of course).
 
Anyway, regardless of that technical stuff it's awesome getting fast internet after not having it for a while. My internet speed recently doubled and it's been great, while what I had before was perfectly fine (10mbps) having that extra speed does make a difference occasionally.

Wow, how the hell could anyone survive with a speed as slow as 120 Kbps. I recently switched from Comcast (33 Mbps Down, 6 Mbps Up) to Verizon (42 Mbps down, 30 Mbps Up), because I could get faster speeds for the same price. I can't even fathom being limited to dial up quality speeds in 2012. I sure hope you were paying like $5 a month, cause that is just ridiculous. Anyway, congrats on entering the 21st century. (That seems condescending when I read it back, but I don't mean it that way)

That's so Raven.

@Raven10 said:

@SexyToad: I have no idea what you would need that for. The barrier for streaming 1080p video is 10 Mbps. I transfer tons of data on a daily basis as I work remotely and usually I spent half of my day simply waiting for files to transfer. Now I can transfer the same amount of data in a couple of minutes. If you ever have a chance you should upgrade to at least 6 Mbps.

@joshthebear: The highlight came when I was watching the Dwarf Fortress thing that Dave is doing and I couldn't make out anything on the screen. I thought I was just going to have to turn it off when suddenly I realized I could watch the video in HD. It was beautiful. I might go back and watch some earlier videos in HD and see how they look.

@adam1808: You are far beyond gaming needs at those speeds. Unless you are streaming the actual game in above 1080p then there is no use for a connection this fast unless you are a business of some sort. At these speeds I can transfer my entire game over the Internet in under 10 minutes. I know they have speeds going up to 50 Mbps in some areas but I just can't imagine what you could be doing that would require that type of speed. Maybe if you had a whole family doing things all at once. You could stream 5 1080p videos at once with those speeds. With just me and my parents there is literally no use for it. If my Mom was paying for it I would tell her to stop. But for free I might as well make use of it.

You keep acting like it's some extravagant thing, that shouldn't exist. 120kbps isn't hardly going to do jack shit for you. If you consume any media, do any video or audio conferencing, or download anything at all, or really do anything besides browse facebook, 120 isn't enough. And 12mbps isn't even that high in some areas. 25 was average for the area I lived in before. 15 is what I get here, in a very populated area.

@Jazzycola said:

You know I'd think larger cities would actually have better internet speeds/infrastructure then smaller towns. I live in a big town/small city in West Texas and I get 1.2 Megabytes per sec(or MBs) on average. The max speed I've ever had was 4 MB per sec on Origin. I had that jump about 6 years ago when I was still in high school. Went from barely getting 100 Kbps to 1200 Kbps over night.

Not at all. Middle is definitely the sweet spot. Enough to justify laying fat pipes, and not so much as to eat up all the bandwidth. We're on a 25mbps plan, and get about 15 at most, because we live very close to Seattle, which is a pretty big city. Our area is very densely populated and there's only one real provider around here: Comcast.

I'm currently rocking 50 mbs down and 3 up here in New Westminster, Canada(near Vancouver)

internet around here has gone up real fast in the last 5 years. i remember only having 5mbs then Shaw gave a free 50% increase. now you can get up to 250 down.

Don't worry PSN downloads will still be really slow.

I always find these discussions so weird. Here in Sweden I get 100 Mbps for almost nothing. The problem is when you've gotten used to it it starts feeling too slow again. If I have to wait 20 minutes for a game to download from steam I'll probably start wondering if something is broken :).

I'm just waiting till September, when our area will finally get BT Infinity (52.5Mb download 13.2Mb upload for my location).

NEED DAT NET, SON!

@TooWalrus said:

Enjoy your porn!

what he said :)

Support Fighting Games Community by using Brazzers :)

@Raven10: This story reminds me of when I switched from dial-up to DSL in 1999 or so and it was one of the few WOW technology moments of my life. The previous one being introduced to computer games on a Pentium 133mhz pc when I owned a 66mhz tandy that couldn't even run Duke Nukem 3D.

It's an awesome feeling.

@Fattony12000 said:

I'm just waiting till September, when our area will finally get BT Infinity (52.5Mb download 13.2Mb upload for my location).

NEED DAT NET, SON!

Just be carefull with BT, they are well known for throtteling the connection without notifying you, their so called "reasonable usage" policy is a total joke.

You'd be surprised how quickly to get used to having faster speed. I remember being amazed at 6MB/s download speeds and now that feels slow to me.

Breathe the free air my friend.

Such a huge difference in internet speeds depending on where you live. Here in sweden we've had a standard of 10mbps since the late 90s. Right now the standard seems to be climbing to 100/100mbps, which I currently have.

And yes, I am enjoying my porn.

It blows my mind that in US this is still a issue, because i have had cable internet since 95 and back then it was so new it was just huge fat pipe with no limits. I remember being able to download at crazy speeds for the time. I currently have a 50MB 5MB connection but our cable company is making up grades and in some areas in our province they are offering gigabit internet.

And i think our cable company came up with a great solution to data usage, i have 500GB a month download level per month and if i go over i pay for the next higher package just for that month and i have never even come close to going past the 500GB limit.

@TooWalrus said:

Enjoy your porn!

yep

@kagato: I've been with BT for over 5 years, I regularly chew through between 250-350 gigabytes per month. I've had no problems, ever, I have always been on the unlimited option however.

That's great. I have been bumped up some Mbps several for free several times now. I'm sitting at 100Mbps now (just did a speed test and I get 90Mbps clean).

Awesome Internet speeds are awesome.

If you downloaded from steam at 3MB/s your mom has a better connection than 12Mbps. It'd would have to be at least double that to download at 3MB/s, anyway, welcome to the present sir :)

@Raven10 said:

Welcome to the future, brother.

@kagato: I've been with BT for over 5 years, I regularly chew through between 250-350 gigabytes per month. I've had no problems, ever, I have always been on the unlimited option however.

@AlexW00d said:

hate to double post, but I am on my phone. I am on the infinity unlimited package and download ridiculous amounts of stuff from steam and ganersgate etc and they have never once throttled me. They binned their fair usage policy for unlimited packages years ago.

I binned your mom's Fair Use policy with my unlimited package!

@AlexW00d said:

@Fattony12000

@kagato: I've been with BT for over 5 years, I regularly chew through between 250-350 gigabytes per month. I've had no problems, ever, I have always been on the unlimited option however.

hate to double post, but I am on my phone. I am on the infinity unlimited package and download ridiculous amounts of stuff from steam and ganersgate etc and they have never once throttled me. They binned their fair usage policy for unlimited packages years ago.

Good to hear, ill never trust them again after the crap i went through with them (its a long story) but im glad they seemed to have cleaned up their act. Hopefully youll never have to phone tech support or get double charged randomly due to a supposed system errors.

STALKER is awesome. I get around 2Mbps. I'm excited for the day I get an even faster one, to you people in countries with crazy fast internet you are very lucky.

@MordeaniisChaos said:

@Raven10 said:

@SexyToad: I have no idea what you would need that for. The barrier for streaming 1080p video is 10 Mbps. I transfer tons of data on a daily basis as I work remotely and usually I spent half of my day simply waiting for files to transfer. Now I can transfer the same amount of data in a couple of minutes. If you ever have a chance you should upgrade to at least 6 Mbps.

@joshthebear: The highlight came when I was watching the Dwarf Fortress thing that Dave is doing and I couldn't make out anything on the screen. I thought I was just going to have to turn it off when suddenly I realized I could watch the video in HD. It was beautiful. I might go back and watch some earlier videos in HD and see how they look.

@adam1808: You are far beyond gaming needs at those speeds. Unless you are streaming the actual game in above 1080p then there is no use for a connection this fast unless you are a business of some sort. At these speeds I can transfer my entire game over the Internet in under 10 minutes. I know they have speeds going up to 50 Mbps in some areas but I just can't imagine what you could be doing that would require that type of speed. Maybe if you had a whole family doing things all at once. You could stream 5 1080p videos at once with those speeds. With just me and my parents there is literally no use for it. If my Mom was paying for it I would tell her to stop. But for free I might as well make use of it.

You keep acting like it's some extravagant thing, that shouldn't exist. 120kbps isn't hardly going to do jack shit for you. If you consume any media, do any video or audio conferencing, or download anything at all, or really do anything besides browse facebook, 120 isn't enough. And 12mbps isn't even that high in some areas. 25 was average for the area I lived in before. 15 is what I get here, in a very populated area.

@Jazzycola said:

You know I'd think larger cities would actually have better internet speeds/infrastructure then smaller towns. I live in a big town/small city in West Texas and I get 1.2 Megabytes per sec(or MBs) on average. The max speed I've ever had was 4 MB per sec on Origin. I had that jump about 6 years ago when I was still in high school. Went from barely getting 100 Kbps to 1200 Kbps over night.

Not at all. Middle is definitely the sweet spot. Enough to justify laying fat pipes, and not so much as to eat up all the bandwidth. We're on a 25mbps plan, and get about 15 at most, because we live very close to Seattle, which is a pretty big city. Our area is very densely populated and there's only one real provider around here: Comcast.

Oh I know 120 kb is nothing. I hated it. But 12 Mb is certainly fast enough for me. I just don't see what someone would need 50+ Mb for. Can people not wait for an hour to download a game? Obviously it would be nice to have if you live in an area where it doesn't cost a fortune, but in the US those speeds cost $50 a month or more depending on the provider. I'm perfectly happy spending half that to get 12 Mb. I can wait for an hour or two to download something.

@pekarn: I don't even think they offer 100 Mbps connections in the US. At least I've never heard of any. And I'm sure if they did it would cost over $100 a month.

@DeanoXD: Yea in a lot of places in the US they are just getting basic cable modems and in some rural areas your only option is still dial up or Satellite. It's hard with a country this large to lay down that many cables and I'm sure our lovely government wouldn't dream of spending money on that over waging war on 10 different countries. You know, the American way, worry about killing anyone else before worrying about helping your citizens.

I got a free upgrade last month, went from 20mb to 60mb, max download speed now is 7600kb/s up from 2300kb/s.

@Raven10: A town very close to mine, Issaquah, has a posh-ish residential area with gigabit internet, supposedly. And it's built into the houses, I don't even know if they have to pay for it. It's a big part of why I want to move there.

@MordeaniisChaos: That screams overkill to me. At that speed you could download even a game as large as Max Payne 3 in under half an hour. Without doing the numbers I would guess it would take under 10 minutes. For 99.9% of people there is no need for that speed. The average family that watches Youtube videos and goes on Facebook would have stopped noticing the difference at about 10 Mbps. What you need 100x that speed for is beyond me. I guess I would like it but honestly at that level I'm pretty sure that even a solid state drive would be a bottleneck. On a standard hard drive there is no way you could save the data as quickly as you are downloading it. At that point it has become overkill.

I don't have it, but my provider Verizon Fios offers 300mb/s now.

I do about 1.7mb/s, which is pretty fast as far as Canada is concerned. Its not as competitive up here so we get a lot less for the same price as the states, but its pretty nice to download movies in like 7 minutes.

@Raven10: It is overkill, but it's still a very good thing, because the truth is what you have now is what I would say is the low end of where we should be at. With the rise of digital distribution, and massive file sizes, games that can take an hour to download, or even more, I'd say cutting that down to 15-20 minutes isn't overkill. It also helps push the envelope, to encourage Comcast to get their shit together and upgrade their piss poor pipes. There are places in Europe were 50mbps is normal, here it's more like 10, and there is an appreciable difference between the two.

It's always better to be ahead of the curve on infrastructure, and right now, we are kinda behind. And it's all because comcast dominates so much and the big fiber providers are slowly backing down. Fios for example is no longer expanding service, which is a bummer.

My connection started taking a dive in primetime hours. It's almost enough to make me move someplace nicer, but rent here is crazy. It's a real drag.

My family home is on 100 mb/s, which is mental. You don't really ever notice the difference too much to a connection running at half the speed though.

300 mb/s at my parents house. I've recently moved out and right now though, I'm "borrowing" Wi-Fi from my neighbor.

Welcome to a better world, duder.

If only it was a government mandate to bring highspeed internet to everyone. Like with taxes?

Good lord - Chicago is a metropolis, how doesn't it have full highspeed internet coverage?

@adam1808: I went from a CRAPTACULAR 3mbps and I am currently at 16mbps. I feel your joy bro.

That's so dinosaurs man. I'm happy for you. I get 15-20 Mb/s at my house, and it's amazing. I thank the lordie that I can download a game in a couple of hours and watch HD videos just like that.