Should I downgrade my internet speed?

You need above 2mb for HD/3d streaming. Netflix adjusts the image in real time, so if you have 2mb, you will be able to watch the movie, but the picture will drop to a lower quality, like 480p.

For regular internet activity, 2mb is fine. You need at least 4mb for hd/3d streaming. Although, when I say HD, I’m referring to 1080p. You can maybe get away with partial HD (720p) on 2mb, but I doubt it.

Ask for a trial run. If it doesn’t suit your needs, switch back.

Thanks. I don’t care too much about the quality of streaming, as long as it’s not super grainy. I will probably downgrade and see what happens. If it’s too slow, I’ll just go back to my current package.

You can check your current speed at speedtest.net. You may be surprised to find that your pc /router combination is not moving as fast as you think. You might only be getting about 4 to 6 M/s.

One other thing to consider is how many machines share the connection. If you only have one machine, fine, but if someone turns on their smartphone’s wifi to conserve their data plan you’re boned. As my place usually has 2–3 computers and my wife’s phone sharing our DSL connection, I couldn’t do it, though we do okay with 7Mbps.

I’ve done some speed tests over time and I regularly get 18–20 Mbps even though I’m only paying for 15.

Here is another interesting fact, my apartment building offers free WiFi. It’s unsecured so I refuse to use it and I pay for my own Internet. I’m the only one in my building who has cable, according to the cable tech guy who had to come out months ago to solve an issue. My understanding is that this probably makes my speed quite fast because there is no other traffic other than myself.

As an aside, cable is usually shared with your neighbors, so when they say, “up to….”, you’ll only ever see that speed when you’re the only person in the building (or, in some places, neighborhood) who even has cable internet. DSL uses a dedicated line, so while the speeds are lower, they’re largely unaffected by your neighbors. I pay for 7Mbps and get it all the time without fluctuations.

No one in my building has cable, only me. The “free” wifi provided by my apartment is on DSL, not cable. Probably explains my better-than-average internet cable speeds. No one pays for cable internet….everyone just wants to use the “free” wifi. Ugh, no thanks.

But yeah, I’m thinking I will probably see great speeds, as I’m pretty much the only one on cable.

I downgraded it. I’m glad I did. Downloads are a lot slower but it’s no biggie because I usually leave things to download overnight or over a few hours.

Streaming is still great. It’s very fast and good quality. I can’t notice any speed difference when I am surfing the web. Internet videos come up quickly and there is no buffering. I’m getting around 2Mbps, maybe a little over, but I am confident I’ll continue to get this speed because like I said, everyone else in my building is using the free provided Wifi which on DSL only, not cable. So there is really no congestion here at all.

Saving about $20/month. Cool beans.

GA! You did the right thing. So many people pay for more than they need or more than their devices can handle. All of us should check periodically. Hopefully you reported the speed result to speedtest.net.
Thanks for the reminder.

I sure did. I’ve been reminding my friends too. It’s amazing how much people think that you need 10mbps to do anything more than web browsing. It’s definitely not true. Latency is a bigger factor. I don’t mind waiting a bit to download things as long as streaming video and browsing still work fine.

@seekingwolf You did the right thing for you, but for the sake of others reading this who may be considering the same move, your mileage may vary. It really does depends on what your home situation is.

I take it that you rarely download Linux DVD ISOs while your spouse streams and your roommate games. I do mind waiting a bit to download things as many of my downloads are often quite large, and would rather they take 90 minutes than effectively lock up my connection for the entire night and most of the next morning.

It’s just me (no roommates thank god, no spouse) and I do download 1–2 GB files (usually ISOs, sometimes .rars) but I am okay with waiting. I do not work from home, if I did, I would have stuck with the speedier package. I have since downloaded large files while streaming and browsing so it doesn’t lock up my connection but yeah, it does take a lot longer than it used to. If it did lock up my connection, that would have been bad.

Downgrading was definitely worth it for me.

I think truly, if someone wants to save money, downgrade and see what happens. If you don’t like the speed, switch it back. Easy as that.

We used to have 1Mbps, which worked fine so long as only one computer was up at a time. However, it got a little dodgy with two depending on what each was doing, and one you got to 3–4, it was near-dialup with no streaming possible.

Yeah I can’t really recommend this if there are multiple people. Many 2 people if they are lite users. For someone like me who is heavy data user but is alone, I’m okay. But I also have no congestion. Like I said, everyone in my building using free dsl wifi that’s included with rent.