> With modern internet connections being 200Mbit to 1Gbit, I don't see that we need the bandwidth in private homes
Private connections tend to be asymmetrical. In some cases, e.g. old DOCSIS versions, that used to be due to technical necessity.
Private connections tend to be unstable, the bandwidth fluctuates quite a bit. Depending on country, the actually guaranteed bandwidth is somewhere between half of what's on the sticker, to nothing at all.
Private connections are usually used by families, with multiple people using it at the same time. In recent years, you might have 3+ family members in a video call at the same time.
So if you're paying for a 1000/50 line (as is common with DOCSIS deployments), what you're actually getting is usually a 400/20 line that sometimes achieves more. And those 20Mbps upload are now split between multiple people.
At the same time, you're absolutely right – Gigabit is enough for most people. Download speeds are enough for quite a while. We should instead be increasing upload speeds and deploying FTTH and IPv6 everywhere to reduce the latency.
This is a great post. I often forget that home Internet connections are frequently shared between many people.
This bit:
> IPv6 everywhere to reduce the latency
I am not an expert on IPv4 vs IPv6. Teach me: How will migrating to IPv6 reduce latency? As I understand, a lot of home Internet connections are always effectively IPv6 via CarrierNAT. (Am I wrong? Or not relevant to your point?)
> Google has measured to most customers about 20ms less latency on IPv6 than on IPv4, according to their IPv6 report.
I've run that comparison across four ISPs and never seen any significant difference in latency... not once in the decades I've had "dual stack" service.
I imagine that Google is getting confounded by folks with godawful middle/"security"ware that is too stupid to know how to handle IPv6 traffic and just passes it through.
Private connections tend to be asymmetrical. In some cases, e.g. old DOCSIS versions, that used to be due to technical necessity.
Private connections tend to be unstable, the bandwidth fluctuates quite a bit. Depending on country, the actually guaranteed bandwidth is somewhere between half of what's on the sticker, to nothing at all.
Private connections are usually used by families, with multiple people using it at the same time. In recent years, you might have 3+ family members in a video call at the same time.
So if you're paying for a 1000/50 line (as is common with DOCSIS deployments), what you're actually getting is usually a 400/20 line that sometimes achieves more. And those 20Mbps upload are now split between multiple people.
At the same time, you're absolutely right – Gigabit is enough for most people. Download speeds are enough for quite a while. We should instead be increasing upload speeds and deploying FTTH and IPv6 everywhere to reduce the latency.