Please help me come up with a compelling argument to convince my husband to spend an additional $200/month on AT&T Fiber Internet with 5Gbps download / 5 Gbps upload.
We currently have Comcast Xfinity cable with 1.2Gbps download and something like 35 Mbps upload. Xfinity has a 2Gbps plan we could potentially upgrade to. I'm not willing to cut the cord and get rid of cable TV. That means that we would be keeping a Comcast account just for a TV plan.
My ATT story. Moved from MA to CA and needed to get the apartment setup. The apartment complex was an ATT only zone.
Fine. Call ATT and their phone system kept routing me to their Massachusetts offices. No one at ATT could override that or forward me to the right office.
OK, find the local ATT store and go in. Much confusion at their counter because their store system was indication my phone number was in MA. (Duh)
Another person in the shop stepped in and took over. Got the work orders placed.
The next arrival was The ATT Keystone Cops episode. The installer showed up and claimed they need to get a phone line working first and then DSL. I had ordered fiber but not the gigabit as well, not available there.
Anyhow the tech calls in and arranges for the DSL/Phone tech to come in.
DSL/Phone tech shows up and tells me the wires are bad. I wait for them to figure it out and they run out to the distribution box and fix the wiring. Hint: It was on a high speed set. OK, the high speed internet tech is queued up.
High speed tech arrives and tells me the wiring is wrong. Since I was there for the DSL/phone tech I ask if what they did had to be undone. Yup they say. They run out to the box and put the apartment on the high speed connection.
Tech unpacks gear, sets it up and done for months. Works fine.
-> Found a house, bought it and thought that transferring service or getting same at the home would be easier.
Nope, same story. But this time I wasn't going to give them time to sort it out. Cancelled it all, they wanted to charge me to which I said "No" and other words since it was their fubar and not mine.
I returned from work overseas and called ATT Investor Relations to report the Keystone Cops show. I don't consider ATT to be a viable choice today. Much like any Tim Cook or Musk associated products.
In NY, I had Spectrum cable at home, and Verizon FiOS fiber at my office.
In CA, I started with Xfinity cable. Just before COVID, we moved into a townhouse that had a spotty connection that became unbearably inconsistent. Apple ended up paying for us to have AT&T fiber because my husband is an engineering manager there, and they needed their employees to have reliable Internet connections during work from home orders. We had a really shitty experience with Xfinity customer support and a really excellent experience with AT&T.
We have since moved and AT&T wasn't available, so we went back to Xfinity cable. AT&T just became in our neighborhood available and I'd love to go back to it.
And you need 5Gbps because...?
AT&T just became in our neighborhood available and I'd love to go back to it.
Yeah, I'd be letting the neighbours be the guinea pigs. I have little doubt that the "it's available" came from AT&T marketing department as soon as someone in provisioning said "um, maybe". Even if they really are "ready", if there's an initial stampede of early switchers, you might be in a queue.
Even more reason for caution, if your livelihood depends on a stable and reliable connection.
On the plus side, at least you now have a stick to beat your existing provider with.
And you need 5Gbps because...?
Awaiting suggestions.
Dunno - could you run Daniweb at home with that kind of bandwidth and save a chunk on data centre fees?
Or would something like that fall foul of the Terms of Service and/or Acceptable Use Policy?
Awaiting suggestions.
Sounds like you want it because you want it and can't think of a reason to justify it. Can you think of any ways in which it would make your life easier? How much time would it actually save you and how often would it make a noticeable difference? Advertised speed is often much greater than actual speed. As you are well aware you are often limited to the speed at which the server you are connecting to can send the data, and that also depends on the current load on the server.
Dunno - could you run Daniweb at home with that kind of bandwidth and save a chunk on data centre fees?
Or would something like that fall foul of the Terms of Service and/or Acceptable Use Policy?
Running servers is allowable. Whether or not the servers can be for business purposes with a home plan, I have not yet looked into. Whether or not 5Gbps is enough, I also don't know, although my first guess would be that it previously wouldn't have been, but it would be with the very little traffic we get today. However, I also wouldn't be able to speak to the reliability of a home Internet plan, fiber or otherwise. In the datacenter, we are directly connected to the Internet through multiple bandwidth providers.
Even more reason for caution, if your livelihood depends on a stable and reliable connection.
More than anything, my livelihood depends on the ability to get out of bed, which is a real struggle most days. Hence the lack of a viable livelihood these days.
Sounds like you want it because you want it and can't think of a reason to justify it.
Yup. That one!
Can you think of any ways in which it would make your life easier?
No. Can you?
How much time would it actually save you and how often would it make a noticeable difference?
That one's easy. It would make a very noticible difference every time I ran a speed test.
Advertised speed is often much greater than actual speed.
When we had AT&T Fiber in our previous place, the actual speeds pretty much matched the advertised speeds.
As you are well aware you are often limited to the speed at which the server you are connecting to can send the data, and that also depends on the current load on the server.
The most meaningful difference, compared to what we have now, are in the upload speeds. 35Mbps vs 5Gbps. To Salem's point, aside from how many Nest cams we can have, it would give the ability to run home server(s). We have quite a ton of IoT devices, but perhaps not 5Gbps worth of them.
I hadn't considered that you could host Daniweb from your home. That would certainly make it more convenient. Would the savings from not having to pay a company to host Daniweb be the same or more than the upgrade and additional power costs for the home servers?
I hadn't considered that you could host Daniweb from your home. That would certainly make it more convenient.
While it might technically be possible to host DaniWeb from my home, it would not be practical. Firstly, I did some research since yesterday, and it seems against the AT&T terms of service to have servers for a for-profit business running from a home plan. A small blog would fall under the radar, but they would likely shut us down for the amount of traffic that we get.
Secondly, we currently have a rack at a datacenter in Texas. We would need to ship all of our equipment to my home, and then find room in our small home for a server rack.
Thirdly, we would lose the advantage(s) of being in a big datacenter. Redundant uplink connections, etc. The datacenter is also minutes from where blud, our sysadmin of 20 years, lives, so that if anything were to go wrong, he could go there in person and fix it.
We also have the problem of very frequent blackouts where we live, that typically last 2-3 days at a time. After dealing with it for 2 years in a row since moving here, on the 3rd year, we finally installed solar last year. After spending so much money on a solar array and batteries, there has been only one blackout since, lasting for all of 12 minutes. (Of course, right?)
So, all in all, not very practical or realistic to save about $200/mo.
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