[mabbo]

I recently upgraded to 1.5gbps and realized a few things.

The downsides: the Cat5e cables inside my condo walls can't handle more than 1.0gbps; my desktop's network port also maxes out at 1.0gbps; the wifi router in my home can't do more than 600mbps even if standing right next to it.

But also, nothing I do needs this much bandwidth. I can download any steam game in the blink of an eye. I can watch streaming video at resolutions higher than my eyes can distinguish. Outside of a few high bandwidth edge cases, there's very little I need more than 100mbps for.

If you offered me 25gbps internet right now I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and what I have!

Someone tell me: what will I need that much bandwidth for?

[ShakataGaNai]

What will you need that much bandwidth for... in the future.

Today? You don't need 25gig. Even if you're in a house with all the latest technology and a half dozen users, you probably won't ever saturate that line unless everyone REALLY tried.

But tomorrow is a different story. Ethernet above 1gig is becoming more common in the consumer world. Not super popular, but its starting to take shape. Wifi 6E has a theoretical maximum of just shy of 10gig. Wifi 7 (not ratified) is looking to be around 40gig.

With work from home and, in general, the world going more digital - there is a lot more pushing around of files. Do you have an iPhone or Android? Everytime your phone is on the wifi its backing up your photos/videos (and other stuff). That alone can slow down most peoples internet connections. Does your computer do backups?

Also once your internet starts to hit about the 1gig mark, you can treat remote servers like we treat LAN today. Want to have a server but don't want to have it at home? That's ok when you've got 1+ gig internet. Of course, it'd be even nicer if that was even faster... in theory.

[viscountchocula]

Doing multiple of those things at once. You're watching a movie while one kid is downloading a game and another is watching something else? I'm saying it lets your whole family never have to interact with one another.

[1123581321]

All your network actions are processing 5-10x faster. A lot of the little things you do are instant at 1GB that added up at 100MB. Medium files are small, and small file transfers are barely noticeable. It changes the feeling of any UI that uses the network.

At 10GB, once you have hardware that supports it, the same thing is going to happen again. Your medium-sized files will feel instant.

On top of all that, you save time on large downloads, huge downloads become not inconvenient, and your whole household can pretty much do all that simultaneously.

Right now, 25gig would only be seriously considered for a business, though.

[matthew-wegner]

I think the peer reply about treating WAN like LAN is the best lens.

Imagine all of your family/friends were on a local wired connection together. What would you do with that? Usually I don't find myself wanting faster bandwidth to interact with big services (Netflix/etc), but with other people or my own remote resources.

I throw around a lot of large VM images, which is definitely outside the average person's uses, but stuff like sending backups to your friend with the huge NAS, Steam/Parsec 4K streaming from that other friend's GeForce 3090 machine, etc...

[Gigachad]

Steam games is the biggest benefit I saw. Modern games are in the tens to hundreds of GB now so gigabit internet is the difference between waiting 15 minutes and 1 hour.

[throwaway892238]

When your microwave, fridge, oven, tv, toaster, dish washer, dryer, tea kettle, and stand mixer are all playing you 4K advertisements for a new TV show or a new pair of Adidas, you will be glad you have 12gbps left to browse the web (which will by then require another 2gbps for all of the javascript, images, and 4K video ads needed to render a blog)

[theandrewbailey]

I noticed the same years ago. I have ~250mbit FiOS. I could upgrade to 1 gigabit for another $20 per month, but I don't feel that my life would be $20 per month better. Websites and Youtube wouldn't download any faster. Due to latency, work won't get any faster. I buy and install new games maybe once per year, but is saving an hour once a year really worth the extra $240 for that year? I don't think so.

I'm the only one at my house. My brother might come over, but that's just one low-end phone on wifi, which feels like a rounding error on ~250mbit.