# How much bandwidth do you need?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-bandwidth-do-you-need/714783>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 11, 2015, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-bandwidth-do-you-need/714783 "2015-03-11T21:51:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-bandwidth-do-you-need/714783/1 "2015-03-11T21:51:42Z")

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Comcast increased their baseline plan in the Seattle area from 25 megabits to 50 a while back, and while I don’t have to pay them any more for that, I do need to upgrade my modem. As far as I’ve been able to tell, I don’t need to upgrade to keep my service as-is, only if I want to take advantage of the speed improvement.

So, great. I’m thinking about sticking where I am. Two people live here, and we certainly stream video, but it’s hard to imagine having more than two streams simultaneously. But I thought I’d see where other people are - how much do you feel like you need for your home? If it’s more than 25, why do you feel you need so much?

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**Author:** ![Stuffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f17d59/32.png) [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-bandwidth-do-you-need/714783/2 "2015-03-11T22:49:30Z")

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ALL. OF. IT. 😃

I only have two kids (well young men really) still at home, but I stream and both kids stream, we have several video games all with network access. Heck, just porn has to take up oodles of bandwidth.

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**Author:** ![kbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kbear)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-bandwidth-do-you-need/714783/3 "2015-03-11T23:04:56Z")

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> [@Stuffy](#):
>
> ALL. OF. IT. 😃
> 
> I only have two kids (well young men really) still at home, but I stream and both kids stream, we have several video games all with network access. Heck, just porn has to take up oodles of bandwidth.

Exactly! As much as possible…Although truthfully, we get 100 mps here and I’m not sure I can tell the difference since they upgraded us from 50.

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**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\
**Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-bandwidth-do-you-need/714783/4 "2015-03-13T16:39:02Z")

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:mad:

[Hughes.net](http://Hughes.net) has fallen on it’s face in the last week or so. When it’s good, and I mean real good I get about 1Mbps (1000kbps). That’s like 6am when nobody is on it.

Around 6pm, it drops down to around .05Mbps (50kbps), which is frankly, not useable.

I’m supposed to be getting 600kbps or a little over .6Mbps.