Is a broadband speed of 17Mb enough between 3 students?

I'm not very knowledgeable on all this, yet need to sort out broadband for my student house next year...
Most places offer 17Mb speed for a good price, is this good enough? or would we get slow internet?
We will most likely we browsing the internet and downloading small documents and powerpoints from online?
If anyone would give me information on this, that would be fantastic :smile:

Reply 1

callum_law

Original post by RLB96

Strange, I have the exact same download speed for next year between 3. You aren't my flatmate, are you?!

We are gonna be downloading more stuff than pptx., I can tell you that.

Reply 2

RLB96

Original post by callum_law

Strange, I have the exact same download speed for next year between 3. You aren't my flatmate, are you?!

We are gonna be downloading more stuff than pptx., I can tell you that.

Hahaha no I'm pretty sure I'm not :smile:

Oh ok...

Reply 3

kyoti

As a student, you would be watching videos, downloading documents, streaming regularly so 17mb between 3 of you might not be ideal, worth getting up to 50mbps with virgin. (cheaper with phone deal)

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 4

Async

17MB is more than enough. If you actually check the traffic when downloading anything, you never truly download at speeds of 17/mb, you download at speeds of like 1mb/s or something like that.

17 mb is fine.

Reply 5

callum_law

Original post by kyoti

As a student, you would be watching videos, downloading documents, streaming regularly so 17mb between 3 of you might not be ideal, worth getting up to 50mbps with virgin. (cheaper with phone deal)

For me, my place doesn't have fibre optic. It's a newly built apartment. I think 17mb/s was the highest deal.

Reply 6

Iqbal007

Original post by Async

MB is a megabyte, Mb is megabit...its one of those little tricks, 1 byte is 8 bits.

Original post by RLB96

Should be fine, though I will say if its all through the wifi, then the multiple connections could overwhelm the router.

Reply 7

Async

Original post by Iqbal007

MB is a megabyte, Mb is megabit...its one of those little tricks, 1 byte is 8 bits.

I study computing so I know the difference between the two. I assumed not everyone would be as pedantic as you to care :tongue:

Reply 8

Iqbal007

Original post by Async

I study computing so I know the difference between the two. I assumed not everyone would be as pedantic as you to care :tongue:

Well I noticed, and I really dislike the way companies create this sort of illusion of sorts in advertising.

Reply 9

Push_More_Button

Original post by Async

Original post by Async

I study computing so I know the difference between the two. I assumed not everyone would be as pedantic as you to care :tongue:

You're joking... Right?

Reply 10

Mad Vlad

Original post by RLB96

Oh bless...

Depends who you're living with. If you have any gamers or downloaders in your house next year, 17Mbps will, at times, be very slow. Pro tip too, avoid the grenade of being the account holder for a shared internet connection. :wink:

Offer to sort the water bill instead.

The other thing you need to consider is traffic management - which Virgin and others apply when you're heavily using the internet in the evening. With multiple people sharing the connection, you can easily get traffic managed from just browsing TSR on some tariffs. (TSR's pages are massive because despite me going on about it for the last 10 years, they still allow .gifs in signatures and other such high bandwidth bull****. I'm also a TSR pro, so I use 60ppp, rather than 20.)