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I'm trying to decide between what high speed internet to get:
20 Mbps (~$60/month) vs 50 Mbps (~$110/month)

I'd like to know if the 50 Mbps would be a noticeable difference and should it justify me shelling more money. This is mainly for people that have actually experienced these different internet speeds. Is it THAT much noticeable and would I get my money's worth?

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It would help to have an idea of your usage profile. How many devices are on your network? What do you typically do with these devices? What do you expect your "peak usage time" scenario to look like? – Iszi Rory or Isznti Apr 1 '11 at 18:47
I'd love to have this kind of dilemma. Speed tops out a 8Mbps for me here, unless I go really expensive. – emgee Apr 1 '11 at 19:36
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closed as not constructive by Sathya♦ Jul 11 '11 at 8:50

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1 Answer

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It will be noticeable if:

  • you share your internet connection with multiple people

  • you have software running at home that makes things available remotely

  • do things like streaming video at the same time while are doing other things online

  • if you do a lot of downloading, your downloads will complete faster.

It is not likely to improve your latency, which is important for games and interactive applications online, unless you are using so much of your bandwidth now that incoming or outgoing traffic on your connection is crowded.

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+1 - It's also not likely to have a noticeable effect on web browsing, which is mostly driven by latency once you have enough bandwidth to download individual assets quickly. – afrazier Apr 1 '11 at 19:56
To add to this answer, You will most likely have more bandwidth than the upload speed of most non-international/large sites, you will only see the benefits when downloading from big sites/torrents(if not filtered) and/or as said in the answer, you share your connection a lot. – William Hilsum Apr 3 '11 at 11:06
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