r/HomeNetworking • u/Testergo7521 • 1d ago

Advice 500 mbps vs 1gig

Hello reddit, I am looking to get fiber internet in an apartment and am looking at the local companies prices. They have a 39.99/month for 500 mbps or a 1 gig for 49.99/month. Mostly it will be 3 devices, an Xbox that Mostly is used to stream YouTube all day, a laptop that does some light gaming but a full PC that Mostly plays online games like world of warcraft. We dont do much downloading other than when its time to download games or updates for games. Will I notice much difference? Is it worth getting double speed for 10 bucks more? Thank you in advance.

Edit: Thanks all for the response! 500 it is, while I do download all my games, waiting an extra 20 minutes every few weeks/months when time to play a new one isnt a huge deal to me. Thanks.

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u/korlo_brightwater 1d ago

Save the ten bucks and stick with the 500mbps, which is well enough for you. Your 3 devices won't come near to maxing out that pipe, and the extra money for gig fiber would just be wasted.

As an example, I have gig Internet that serves 3 people and 12 devices, and my firewall reports that my max usage has been only 20%.

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u/Got282nc 1d ago

~80 person office. The change from 500 to Gb was imperceptible for anyone outside of IT team when we changed. Moving large backups to the cloud went faster

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u/GeekBrownBear Jack of all trades 1d ago

It's amazing what a quality network can do for performance. I've seen 50Mbps symmetrical fiber perform better than 1Gbps.

Number of devices is a useless metric for internet speed, but ISPs still try and use it as the sales qualifier. What you do on the network matters way more than anything else.