Quote:
Originally Posted by wlasowicz
On the question of speed general thinking is the faster the better. I lot depends on your hardware/equipment. Easy way to think of this is you have a car that will only 60mph max but you paying to drive on a road you can go 100mph max Yes you can go faster but your limited because your car will only do 60 mph.
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Responding to the question of response time, you are right and gave a great example. A fiber connection will always be faster and will "seem" quicker assuming your PC or internet device can keep up like most have mentioned because you have a direct connection not a shared one like cable which will vary especially during peak hours. It's not only about speed it's also about the latency or response time of the system which includes the link speed and having enough servers at the ISP. As to your analogy, with cable they can offer you a "deal", 1Gbs for $40/month but you will be on a 100MPH highway with bumper-to-bumper traffic at peak times and enough traffic most other times where on average where you will be moving less than the full 100MPH because there are too many cars on your highway. Depending on where you live in the Villages and how many left cable for fiber will effect your specific experience.
Have you ever wondered why the cable companies can give you internet service for prices that seem incredibly cheap? It's because they don't guarantee any minimum speed or latency. They just give you "Typical" values and from experimenting with both at my house the cable varies all over the place most of the time and the Fiber is dead-on full speed all of the time. Cable companies just keep dumping more and more customers onto their network and do very little or no expansion at least here in the Villages.
For example: For my home here in Osceola Hills
Xfinity 1Gbs $85/month
Speeds Provided with Plan
Typical download speed 1167.49 Mbps
Typical upload speed 41.01 Mbps
Typical latency 13.77 Milliseconds
Quantum 1Gbs $35/month (regular price $65/month)
Download speed 940 Mbps
Upload speed 940 Mbps
Latency 4 Milliseconds
Although the download speeds are similar, the minimum latency is about 10ms+ with cable and it's usually more from my testing.
So, at the end of the day, many don't care about this difference but these are facts. Now, I do want to also point out, if you live in the North East or some other metro area, cable has newer infrastructure and can approach fiber but we don't have that here in the Villages and if we did you wouldn't be paying $30 or $40/month for internet. You will be paying a premium.
I'm sorry for the long response but after I retired from Verizon, I sold internet in NY for many years and in this day and age everyone should have a choice of internet providers and fully understand what they need and don't need and choose the service that best suits their individual needs. Fortunately most have a choice of providers here in the Villages.