Over the years, the number of megabytes that we can hire in our fiber optic line has been progressively increasing. With higher speed available, we are often tempted to love it because of the “big donkey, walk or not walk”, but is a speed greater than 100 Mbps fiber really necessary?
We are going to analyze what uses each of the most offered connection speed ranges in Spain should have to see if they fit your case or not.
300 Mbps of fiber: useful if you don’t live alone
Starting with the 300 Mbps of fiber, which in fact is the speed that the vast majority of operators are imposing as the minimum connection speed, to the detriment of 100 Mbps, they are especially recommended in shared flats where the Internet connection is going to be be used by more than one person simultaneously.
It is a connection especially recommended (not to say necessary) for those households in which one or more people download files such as movies or series (including streaming buffering). These processes could exhaust bandwidth for other users with lower fiber speed, but 300 Mbps should be stable for this usage.
You probably don’t need 600 Mbps or 1 Gbps
Over time, other alternatives began to emerge, such as 600 Mbps or 1 Gbps fiber. Beyond wanting the maximum that the operator offers us or that they increase the speed without extra cost, very few homes really need it , in both cases.
It is true that these speeds allow you to download large files in a very short time , but that urgency is more typical of companies than of private homes. In addition, it is especially indicated for simultaneous downloads for a large number of devices without affecting the connection speed. Once again, something more typical of a company.
There is a specific case in which this speed would be recommended within the home and that is if you use your network to play video games online . Not only speed will matter here, but low latency and having more bandwidth will make the quality of the game less of a strain.
Fiber 10 Gbps: currently unnecessary
First of all, the maximum speed of the XGSPON network is up to 10 Gbps for data transmission, but in most routers installed by operators that offer this speed, it will allow you to connect at approximately 8 Gbps , which will be the maximum usable speed. by your devices and the rest ensures connectivity between equipment. In this case, it will already be less than you thought for technical reasons.
In addition, we will not only need the operator to have coverage at this speed, which is already more complicated, but it also requires special equipment for our computer . To start with, we need a 10G BASE-T compatible Ethernet. Cat.6 Ethernet cables are the minimum that are compatible with this technology, while it is recommended to use an Ethernet Cat.6a or higher.
You will also need to have a 10G network card in your computer, or a Thunderbolt 3 adapter with a 10 Gbps Ethernet port.
Beyond the necessary extra outlay, there are really very few specific cases in which the need to use this fiber speed would be justified . An example can be, for example, someone who is constantly uploading content to the Internet, such as a youtuber. The most concrete and usable case would again be gaming, where XGS-PON technology has a much lower minimum latency than with GPON. While with the current one we are left with figures around 4 or 5 ms, with XGS-PON it is possible to have ping figures of 0 or 1 ms at most.