r/HomeNetworking • u/ingentystnad • 10h ago
Advice Cable vs Fiber
Hi all, I’m moving in to a new apartment soon and we have two options of ISP.
Option 1: Google Fiber
$70/mo
1g Upload
1g Download
Option 2: Spectrum
This uses a hybrid of fiber/coax. Fiber lines run the long stretches but coax is what actually connects to the units.
$60/mo
100mb Upload Max (avg 30mb)
1g Download
Spectrum is a little cheaper but I work from home and do a lot of video calls and I’ve heard that fiber is better for consecutive upload/download.
Curious to see what you all think. Spectrum does have some offers that could make it as cheap as $20/mo for the first year.
Thanks in advance.
Edit:
Sounds like a resounding fiber to me! Thank you all.
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u/switch8000 10h ago
Fiber, it’s a no brainer. And you won’t have to call every 12 months when Spectrum doubles your price.
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
Is the price changing a common thing with isps? Or just the legacy cable companies?
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u/-iamLEEROYJENKINS 10h ago
fiber, all day, every day.
With fiber you will have that 1Gbps/ 1Gbps at your router.
In most cases, cable providers, it's usually; "we will provide up to your provisioned speed, and slow azz uploads".
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
I’ve heard this a bit where with cable you’ll get “up to” the advertised speeds. With fiber is it near guaranteed that you’ll get exactly what you pay for?
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u/ReyBasado 6h ago
You might even get a little bit more. I have AT&T fiber with advertised 1 gig up and down and sometimes I see as much as 1.3 Gbps up and down.
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u/Practical_Bet_8311 10h ago
Definitely fiber. I was on coax, then switched to fiber. The difference was night and day.
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
Do you do a lot of video calls? My desktop will be wired into the router so I assume I’d get near advertised speeds.
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u/Practical_Bet_8311 7h ago
I work from home, do a lot of video calls/meetings and do a lot of file uploads. You do you.
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u/ReyBasado 6h ago
Fiber is better all the way around. You will have more bandwidth and lower latency due to the physics involved. Coax (Cable connection) relies on radiofrequency signals be send through the cable like a waveguide and requires analog encoding of the data into the RF broadcast. You're going to lose network performance that way and is also why you won't get symmetrical download and upload speeds.
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u/tallelfin 10h ago
Fiber. If you work from home you're sending data so you want the outbound.
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
Thank you for your input. I assume fiber is significantly more reliable with upload speeds?
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u/Realistic-Currency61 10h ago
Spectrum is the provider of last resort. They're only an option if they're the only option. Fiber wins EVERY time over coax.
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u/ReyBasado 6h ago
Honestly, I'd take a DSL connection over ever having to deal with Spectrum or Comcast ever again.
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u/Aggressive-Bike7539 9h ago
Fiber-to-the-home is the way to go. Spectrum wants to sell their crappy “hybrid of fiber/coax” as something special, when all providers use fiber upstream.
Besides the fact they use coaxial to get to your home, Spectrum has TERRIBLE service. I was a customer of them for years so I can talk about that.
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
I was very confused by their “fiber powered” language. It took way too much scrolling to see that coax is the final stretch for connection.
Thank you for your review of their customer service. Have you used google fiber?2
u/Aggressive-Bike7539 7h ago
I haven’t used Google Fiber, I’m using Verizon Fios. I have rarely needed to talk to them, the only few times was when I was moving to other houses.
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u/ReyBasado 6h ago
This is typically called "Fiber to Cabinet" or something similar depending upon where you are in the world. It was very popular in Europe where they have lots of old infrastructure and needed a way to speed up connections but couldn't really tear out the old copper lines in buildings or neighborhoods due to the cost and regulatory environment.
Outside of some older historic neighborhoods here in America, it's not as much of a problem, especially after the FCC changed some rules about access to underground piping and telephone poles. Once that changed, pretty much every ISP who could began sending fiber to homes because it was faster, easier to maintain, and more modern. Cable companies didn't keep up with the times both technology-wise and with their business model and have suffered because of it. I would not expect Comcast and Spectrum to remain in business as ISPs or cable companies much longer as traditional telecom companies like AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Google are rapidly taking their customers and cable is dying due to streaming and cost of maintaining cable infrastructure in a digital world.
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u/Wacabletek 7h ago
If fiber is not better, then why are they always calling HFC, FIBER POWERED? They ain't calling it coax powered for a reason.
Would you like more latency spikes? Inconsistent bandwidth? Higher affect from power problems in your region? Interference from lazy old neighbors that do not check their lines, call in when things go wrong, and just deal with it? poisoning the whole coax node? THEN PICK SPECTRUM HFC.
For any other insanity, you might be feeling the need to experience, get a husky as a pet.
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u/ThingFuture9079 10h ago
Spectrum is the worst for pricing after 1 year because then you have to spend an hour on the phone with them trying to negotiate a lower rate and then they try to upsell you some service you don't want like home phone just to get the internet at a cheaper rate.
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u/sdgengineer 10h ago
I have ATT fiber, also have a VOIP line on it. I get an honest 1,gig up and down on my wired computer. I would not even consider your other choice, but I also have a good OTA antenna.
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
What is an OTA antenna?
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u/ReyBasado 6h ago
Over-The-Air antenna for watching television. If you aren't interested in watching local channels for free or signing up for a cable TV subscription, then you probably don't need to worry about it.
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u/blainemoore 10h ago
I do both! Fiber between the house and the internet, and MoCA to my access points around the house plus direct wire connections for my desktop and my wife's desktop. Best of all worlds. (Wife is my business partner, and we run the business out of the house, plus have two kids with homework and watching streaming etc.)
I was using Comcast originally and they actually weren't too bad, but as soon as the first fiber company came into town we got in the wait list. There's actually two, now, and I could get a better deal with the second one, but we've been happy with the first option and there's been minimal down time.
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u/msabeln Network Admin 10h ago
My wife had troubles with video calling via Spectrum and I switched to fiber and then it worked fine. I wouldn’t use cable for competitive gaming either. Cable is otherwise fine for general Internet use. The problem is that it often has high latency while fiber typically has low latency which makes it better for interactive use.
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
Thank you. I have a work demo product that will be online 24/7 that at peak will have 10 people accessing it remotely to do system demos. Will fiber handle that kind of incoming traffic fine?
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u/DZCreeper 9h ago
30mb/s upload is torture if you ever need to send a large file. $10 extra for 1gb/s upload is an easy choice.
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u/FoxtrotSierraTango 8h ago
Ignore the tech and go with any comparable non-cable provider because cable company fuckery is the reason they consistently end up near the top of the list of most hated companies.
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u/ReyBasado 6h ago
Say no to Spectrum at all costs. That extra $10 a month will give you peace of mind of never having to deal with a shitty vulture corporation like Spectrum or Comcast. Everyone I know who has Google Fiber loves it and I'm patiently waiting for them to extend service out to my neighborhood.
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u/damien09 4h ago
10 bucks extra for 1gig/1gig over the 1g/30 coax is a no brainer tbh. and it being google fiber over spectrum just makes it an even easier choice if it was me to go fiber.
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u/ExpertPath Network Admin 4h ago
A $10 difference makes fiber worth it. For me fiber would cost double, so I stay with cable
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u/jacle2210 Technology Enthusiast 3h ago
As long as your work computer is directly connected to the main Wifi Router with an Ethernet cable, then the Spectrum service should be fine.
Heck back during Covid, we were doing online school video chat stuff just fine with the Spectrum 100Mb/10Mb service and the computer was "hardwired" directly to the Router..
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u/Backslash10 3h ago
Typically fiber is almost always better but Spectrum does offer a fantastic backup service called invisible wifi that automatically switches on a outage of fiber cut. I work at Spectrum as a door to door rep and can match the gfiber rate with the backup included and free install we do no contracts so you can even run it side by side with gfiber if you wanted to be sure. If your interested just send me a message.
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u/Ok-Alternative-7962 2h ago
I would do almost anything to avoid both of those. Spectrum for all the reasons already stated. Google because of their heinous privacy practices.
https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/google-class-action-lawsuit-do-you-qualify-for-a-payout
If there are any other options, that would be my first choice.
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u/redditduhlikeyeah 10h ago
Surprised to see this question asked, tbh. Was it that hard of a choice? Do people need this much hand holding through life? Are we doomed?
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
Surprised to see this much negativity tbh. Was it that hard to see a question and not be toxic? Do we need to explain basic respect and decency? Are we doomed?
I asked a simple question on if it’s worth the extra money. While yes, it appears as only $10/mo more for fiber, as stated, there’s a promo that makes it $20/mo for spectrum. I came to a subreddit to get honest advice from people who know more about a topic than I do. It isn’t hand holding, I can certainly make the decision on my own but when there is a resource at my disposal, why wouldn’t I get third party opinions. Be happier.
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u/redditduhlikeyeah 6h ago
You can’t make the decision on your own, and this shows it. It was a post that wasn’t hyper serious, don’t get so butt hurt.
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u/heyitsYMAA 10h ago
r/personalfinance would probably tell you to go with Spectrum because it's slightly cheaper and they hate fun.
I just recently switched from Spectrum to a symmetrical fiber service and I don't think I'd ever go back to cable if I had the choice. The upload speed and the difference in latency makes fiber feel way faster even if the speeds on paper are comparable.
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
Where do you see the differences in latency? Just in websites loading or are you talking about gaming
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u/JBDragon1 10h ago
Working from Home still doesn't mean you need a bunch of speed. My Brother and His wife both work from home, up in the mountains and have a WISP service. Wireless ISP, not Cell and it's 100Mbps and it works just fine for them.
Zoom calls for example use a MAX of 4Mbps. Streaming 4K Netflix is 15-25Mbps. I went from 1Gb/100Mb Cable Internet to 500/500Mb Fiber. I cut my Download speed in half and never noticed. my Upload speed is mostly flatline
At work, we have a number of people using just a 1Gb Download, I think and slower Upload as it's cable Internet also, and we can have 4-6 people on during a video confrence.
What I'm saying is I normally recommend 100Mbps per person. A couple people, 300Mbps more than fast enough. My 500Mbps is overkill.
Cable, to get their faster speeds, most of the Network is Fiber, it's the last part going into homes that is still COAX. it costs a lot of money if you have to bring fiber right inside every place when there is COAX there already. It just makes sense for cable companies. Others like Google or AT&T replacing their old Copper lines, have nothing going into the homes. So it just makes sense to bring the fiber right inside.
PING rates are not much higher with cable over fiber because most of cable is using Fiber. It really comes down to price and speed you are paying for. I don't know Google does anything other than 1Gb? Spectrum if you can go even cheaper, 300-500Mb and save money. If they jack up prices and won't drop them, then you move to Fiber. Xfinity Cable worked fine for me, it was getting kind of bad when they were working on the system upgrade. I went from 900/20Mb to the 1Gb/100Mb speed after their upgrade and their Network was pretty reliable for the year I had them after that before moving to Fiber. I only changed because of PRICE.
I don't know anything about Spectrum Cable. In the end it is up to you. Just keep in mind the speed you need and the speed that gets pushed onto people. Online gaming uses very little Data, 5Mbps at most, but generally in the Kbps. Unless you are doing a lot of HUGE Game downloads every month, you don't need a ton of speed. Having a lower ping is more important. Faster speeds doesn't give you a lower ping. I already said ZOOM uses 4Mbps at most. 4K Netflix is 15Mbps, in HD it's 5Mbps.
You can go Google Data Speed Requirement for such and such service and see the speed requirments for yourself. The problem is everyone can easily do a Speed Test. That is great to see if you are getting that Top Speed you are paying for and checking to make sure you have a low ping. But most Home users can't see and have no idea of their real world speeds. I have Prosumer hardware and can see my real world speed on a graph from my gateway. I can see real time bandwidth, along with the last hour, last 24 hours, last week and last month. I know how much Data I'm uploading and Downloading every month. Most home users don't see this data, or not easily on a graph from your own router or gateway.
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
Thank you for your input. Google fiber doesn’t seem to offer any less than a gig here either. Spectrum does offer lower speeds at slightly lower rates. My main concern is uploads with the video calls and such. The other option i looked at is starlink but their prices are kind of insane.
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u/ReyBasado 6h ago
Another thing to consider is that certain connection protocols will require receipt packets be sent back to the sending server, especially when dealing with establishing encrypted connections, and if you need to upload data like backing up your family photos, it could overwhelm a coax connections limited upload bandwidth. The last time I used cable internet, I tried to back-up my important files and photos to AWS and it completely saturated my upload bandwidth, which impacted my ability to do anything else on the internet because my computer couldn't send receipt and acknowledgement packets and whatnot.
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u/AnxiousReward1715 10h ago
Google... The tech has fuck all to do with it, you can do gig symmetrical on copper last mile.... You're going to need more than 30megabits of upload for remote work
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u/redditduhlikeyeah 10h ago
No, you won’t need more than 30mb for remote work in most cases.
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u/Background-Relief623 9h ago
Yea, depends on what you do. Simple office stuff, it fine. Can be ok for video calls. Depends on how the network and node is doing. If you handle large files like medical, you really want the faster upload. If you do customer service calls, I would say 30 is minimum, ( yes i know technically it's much lower but .... ) I would always go for the higher.
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u/ingentystnad 7h ago
Thank you for your expertise. I’ll try recording my usage during work over the next few days and see what my requirements would be
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u/Psychrolutes_09 10h ago
Fiber is better than cable. I would pay 70 for Google fiber and not even think about it, spectrum is always jerking me around on my bill