100mbps/10mbps vs 300mbps/30mbps

[halfmonkey]

I'm currently on a plan with my ISP where I'm supposed to be getting 100mpbs/10mbps and I just checked speedtest.net and it shows that I'm getting about 92.68 mbps download and 9.70 mbps upload. The ping test shows 19ms. I have an ISP supplied modem and I just recently purchased a d-link DIR-880L router since my airport extreme died. The test was conducted on my iMac that is connected via ethernet.

So I have a question about increasing the speeds to my various devices with the background information that you have above. If I upgrade my internet plan to the next level, it jumps to 300mbps/30mbps. Since my d-link DIR-880L is capable of gigabit speeds via ethernet, will that mean that I should be seeing my speediest.net results jump up to about those advertised? If so, does that mean that my wi-fi should also be faster too? We currently have two iphone5's and two ipad2's. I currently have them connected to the 5GHz band.

Is my speed being limited by the internet plan since my devices should be able to handle much faster connections? Curious to know if I should pay for the upgraded internet plan. Thanks.

 

[Altemose]

So I have a question about increasing the speeds to my various devices with the background information that you have above. If I upgrade my internet plan to the next level, it jumps to 300mbps/10mbps. Since my d-link DIR-880L is capable of gigabit speeds via ethernet, will that mean that I should be seeing my speediest.net results jump up to about those advertised? If so, does that mean that my wi-fi should also be faster too? We currently have two iphone5's and two ipad2's. I currently have them connected to the 5GHz band.

Yes. You should be able to achieve those speeds over both wireless and Ethernet with that router provided the connection to the client exceeds the speed of your connection.

 

[MacUser2525]

I'm currently on a plan with my ISP where I'm supposed to be getting 100mpbs/10mbps and I just checked speedtest.net and it shows that I'm getting about 92.68 mbps download and 9.70 mbps upload. The ping test shows 19ms. I have an ISP supplied modem and I just recently purchased a d-link DIR-880L router since my airport extreme died. The test was conducted on my iMac that is connected via ethernet.

So I have a question about increasing the speeds to my various devices with the background information that you have above. If I upgrade my internet plan to the next level, it jumps to 300mbps/10mbps. Since my d-link DIR-880L is capable of gigabit speeds via ethernet, will that mean that I should be seeing my speediest.net results jump up to about those advertised? If so, does that mean that my wi-fi should also be faster too? We currently have two iphone5's and two ipad2's. I currently have them connected to the 5GHz band.

Is my speed being limited by the internet plan since my devices should be able to handle much faster connections? Curious to know if I should pay for the upgraded internet plan. Thanks.

Your wireless devices will always be limited by the connection you get to your router no matter the external speed of the network connection you have from the ISP. Your connection as it is now is already getting full speed taking into account the TCP/IP overhead on the connection. Unless you are doing lots of downloading I highly doubt you will see much if any difference by upgrading. In short the only reason to upgrade right now is if you do ton of downloading and want it faster getting to your wired machine. That of course assumes the servers you are connecting to can give it to you at the faster speed.

 

[halfmonkey]

Your wireless devices will always be limited by the connection you get to your router no matter the external speed of the network connection you have from the ISP. Your connection as it is now is already getting full speed taking into account the TCP/IP overhead on the connection. Unless you are doing lots of downloading I highly doubt you will see much if any difference by upgrading. In short the only reason to upgrade right now is if you do ton of downloading and want it faster getting to your wired machine. That of course assumes the servers you are connecting to can give it to you at the faster speed.

I'm not an expert by any means so any education is much appreciated but I was always explained that the mbps is similar to how a water hose is and the router is like the hose itself. So if those analogies are good, then it seems that the size of the hose is large enough since my DIR-880L router has the ability to be quite fast even if I don't have any devices connected to the new AC standard. I do connect my iPhone5's to the n standard on the 5GHz band though and we do plan to upgrade to either the 6s or the 7 when the new iPhone is released so I'll be connected to the AC standard then. So if the hose is big enough, it seems that I'm not limiting myself to the amount of water passing through which would be the mbps, if I'm making any sense at all.

I thought that the 100mbps is also shared between all of my devices too and it's not that each connected device is getting 100mbps. To keep my understanding and scenario simple, I thought if there were two devices connected and let's just say for the sake of argument that they're sharing the bandwidth equally, then the max 100mbps that my ISP is advertising would be split between the two devices and therefore maxing out at 50mbps per device. If this thinking is correct, then that's the reason why I'm thinking of upgrading. I want to maximize the speed between my devices. For example, my wife may stream Netflix and I'll play CoD BO 3 at the same time while I have other devices connected too. It seems that it would help but again I might not be understanding how the increase in mbps might help with our connection speeds. The ping on my CoD BO3 averages about 40-50 and I don't think increasing the mbps will change this so I believe I may still experience some lag as that is more attributable to the connection to the host of the game.

 

[Weaselboy]

Is my speed being limited by the internet plan since my devices should be able to handle much faster connections? Curious to know if I should pay for the upgraded internet plan. Thanks.

Yes.. you should see the upgraded Internet speeds on all your devices.

Just to add on to what MacUser2525 said, unless you have a very specific use case that will benefit form that speed bump, I would not spend the money on it. You will never notice the difference in day to usage like web browsing for example.
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For example, my wife may stream Netflix and I'll play CoD BO 3 at the same time while I have other devices connected too.

You are correct the Internet speed is shared among all devices. But at 100/10 you already have very good speeds and even sharing Netflix and COD at the same time, I would be surprised if you could tell the difference bumping up to 300/30.

 

[MacUser2525]

Indeed the water hose is apt and like one there is only so much that can flow through it a one time. Now your devices can only drink from that hose so fast nothing will change that unless the hose in their system is changed. That is not going to happen unless you physically rip it apart and change the chips/antenna in them. Your connection is more than fast enough to stream a few netflix at a time plus the gaming and still have the bandwidth left over to do more. With the gaming you may want to look into the quality of service (QoS) settings in the router to give it a higher priority than anything else but the people/computers you are connecting to will be the bottleneck most times. Best page I could come up with on the netflix streaming is below for 4K it is 25mb/s. Your connection should be able to stream four of them at a time. In short again the math does not add up to needing a faster connection as 1080p will be less than half that needed.

https://bgr.com/2015/12/10/netflix-video-quality-browser/