Just a general “heads up” regarding home WIFI.

[BEER]

Just a general “heads up” regarding home WIFI. Rogers and Cogeco do advertise decent WIFI speeds and some of their adds target students, (because of the Covid 19 situation,) most do online classes. Their download speeds are decent HOWEVER they neglect to openly caution that their upload speeds are close to snail pace. For example, Cogeco does offer and push to students their 120 Mbps plan but under closer examination the plan’s upload speed is a max of 10 Mbps. Their top plan is advertised as so called FIBE internet ----  1000 Mbps but again the max upload speed is a max of 30 Mbps. These low upload speeds can hinder students from uploading their assignments on time. While with Cogeco, our household encountered this problem first hand because our University student had problems uploading her papers and other assignments. Her late model MacBook because of the slow upload speed, kept on timing out etc. and is at least on a few occasions the assignments were docked marks because they were late. We have now switched to Bell Fibe 500 and the difference is amazing.  We  now have Bell Fibe 500 – that is true Fibe internet with Fibre optic cable right to our house. Our plan is for 500 Mbps download and 500 Mbps upload.

[BEER]

Yup - it's a 12 month bundle term. phone, tv, internet and my soul.

[gpixel]

@BEER our package monthly charges were actually slightly reduced

until our promotion runs out 😜

[BEER]

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@Korth wrote:

How much uploading does a student really need?

Symmetrical internet connections are only really needed on webservers ... and gameservers ... and peer-to-peer shareservers ... not the sorts of uses a typical student should be investing a lot of time into anyhow, lol.

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But it's nice to have decent symmetrical connection, and why not choose to opt for it  if the cost is the same. I know that there are different factors involved but in our case after switching, our package monthly charges were actually slightly reduced.

[Korth]

How much uploading does a student really need?

There's always minimal traffic to network for website requests and such. Big Assignments might be many megabytes, but it seems no big deal if (after weeks of work) it takes 5 minutes instead of 5 seconds to send them off. So standard asymmetrical bandwidth allocations don't seem too bad to me, especially since the tradeoff is rarely-demanded upload bandwidth being hardwired as constantly-demanded download bandwidth.

Symmetrical internet connections are only really needed on webservers ... and gameservers ... and peer-to-peer shareservers ... not the sorts of uses a typical student should be investing a lot of time into anyhow, lol.

[CowheadUK]

I wouldn’t consider an upload speed of 30 Mbps as slow? Unless you are uploading a film or literally thousands of pictures and you need to get it in within a 1 minute deadline?

Most advertised speeds are way higher than what you actually get unless you are attached by Ethernet.

[BEER]

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@gpixel wrote:

@BEER right at this very moment my upload speed was 753.9mb. 

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We pay for Bell Fibe 500. --Our speeds using the "Speed Test" app.

(1) By direct connection - ethernet to modem.

download---- 558 mbps.  upload ----474 mbps

(2) By WIFI - near modem.

download 260 mbps.   upload ------ 254 mbps

Previously using Cogeco white on WIFI our upload speeds at times were 2 mbps.

[BEER]

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@will13am wrote:

@BEER , what kind of assignments do students submit these days that they need ridiculous speeds to upload it?  I must admit that when Bell placed fiber optic in the neighborhood I was really excited.  However, I am not leaving any time soon as long as big red keeps on renewing me at $25 per month.  I don't run a server, so 20 mbps is adequate.  

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Videos, pictures, graphs, papers, etc. However it also doesn't help when the assignment is due by midnight and is  submitted  at 11:59  ha ... ha ... ha.

On a more serious note - we did have major problems while with Cogeco and were told by their technical support, that the problem is that late in the evenings their lines are congested, and thus reducing speeds, because many households are streaming movies and are using their computers.

ALSO - just because you pay for 20 mbps upload doesn't mean that you actually get it. It all depends on conditions such as direct connection, WIFI, line congestion etc.

[gpixel]

@BEER right at this very moment my upload speed was 753.9mb. 

[will13am]

@BEER , what kind of assignments do students submit these days that they need ridiculous speeds to upload it?  I must admit that when Bell placed fiber optic in the neighborhood I was really excited.  However, I am not leaving any time soon as long as big red keeps on renewing me at $25 per month.  I don't run a server, so 20 mbps is adequate.  

[yanzhiqiang]

Thanks for the info.

[BEER]

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@gpixel wrote:

@BEER I have Telus pure fibre. the speeds are ridiculously fast! my speedtest was 900mb!

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What was the upload speed? Do they provide Fibre optic cable to your house? 

I think that they provide service only to BC and Alta.

Just googled them and yes they do also have high download speed so they must provide a true Fibre optic service ---  - "With blisteringly fast speeds clocking in at up to 1,500 Mbps download and up to 940 Mbps upload,"

[gpixel]

@BEER I have Telus pure fibre. the speeds are ridiculously fast! my speedtest was 900mb!