Right now most operators in Spain have 1Gbps fiber optic modalities, thanks to this speed, we can make the most of both the wired Gigabit Ethernet network and also the WiFi connectivity that wireless routers incorporate. Contracting more speed than 1Gbps does not make much sense right now, because if you exceed the speed of 1Gbps, you will have to make quite important changes in your home local network, so you will have to make a significant outlay of money.
Reasons not to contract fiber of more than 1Gbps
If we want to contract fiber at a speed greater than 1Gbps real with the different operators, it is completely mandatory to change the network electronics of our house , and surely also the network cabling that you are currently using. This is one of the reasons why you should not hire 1Gbps fiber, unless you know for sure that you are going to get the most out of it with your Internet use. Specifically, in order to maximize the speed of an optical fiber to more than 1Gbps, you will need:
- A router that has Multigigabit ports , specifically 10G Multigigabit , since today connections go from 1Gbps to 10Gbps. However, it is very possible that operators such as Orange will soon launch “intermediate” speeds, of 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps. The routers that Internet operators place on us only have a 10G Multigigabit port, so we can squeeze the speed only from one computer, and not from other computers simultaneously.
- Buy a 10G Multigigabit switch . The routers only have one 10G Multigigabit port, so it is necessary to buy an additional switch with ports that are also 10G, in order to make the most of this speed from different equipment, and simultaneously.
- Buy 10G Multigigabit network cards . In order to connect to a 10G switch and synchronize at this speed, it is mandatory that our PC has a 10G port, otherwise, it will synchronize at speeds of 1Gbps if we have a Gigabit Ethernet card, or at 2.5G or 5G if it is Multigigabit.
- Check the network cabling , today it is common to still have Cat 5E cables, if you are going to have high speeds it is recommended that you buy Cat 6 or higher network cables, Cat 7 being the most recommended for its value for money.
Another aspect that you should also assess is the hardware of your own computer , especially the processor and storage. If you use hard drives, you will not be able to achieve a speed of more than 1.5Gbps (180MB/s) when uploading or downloading data to the Internet, since the bottleneck is in the computer itself. You will need a fairly powerful computer, and that uses at least SATA3 SSD drives (up to 4.5Gbps or 550MB/s read and write speed).
Another reason not to contract speeds higher than 1Gbps is that the vast majority of Internet services do not support these ultra-fast speeds , for example, if you are going to upload videos to YouTube you will be limited to about 300Mbps, something similar happens with Google Drive where you will get 400Mbps in the best case, far from the real 8000Mbps that you could get with 10G fiber modes. That is, you will not be able to take advantage of this fast speed , unless you use different cloud storage services simultaneously. Nowadays it is quite complicated for you to be able to take advantage of the download or upload speed to the maximum, since Internet servers should be able to send you data at a real speed of 8Gbps, too high today for a single client.
As you can see, if you are going to contract speeds higher than 1Gbps you have to think about whether it is really worth it, because, although the bandwidth you have contracted is up to 8Gbps, there are really no services on the Internet like Google Drive, Dropbox and others that allow these high speeds, so you will not be squeezing the fiber to the fullest.