How Fast is Speeds up to 1.5 Mbps/256 kbps?

Question

I am looking into internet service providers. The problem is I don't know how fast speeds up to 1.5 Mbps/256 kbps?

To give you an idea of what I do on the internet - I do a lot of internet browsing. I listen to music through Real Rhapsody. I watch YouTube a lot. I also watch videos through VH1 or TV show websites. I sometimes download video clips from YouTube but not very often. I like to look at photos so I open a lot of picture thumbnails.

The company also offers (Speeds up to 10 Mbps/512 kbps) but it is twice as expensive and I don't know if I need that much speed for what I do.

Can anyone give me an idea of how much speed is good for what I do.?

Answer 1

It's not a terrible speed, for browsing purposes and streaming music it's pretty good, small to medium downloads will not be too bad, however your biggest issue will be streaming video, you may experience some jitterness, but like most people said, try it out first before you jump to the twice as much plan.

Answer 2

In the general scheme of things - any connection speed that is 1+ Mbps will be perfectly fine for basic internet use like browsing, music, and lower resolution youtube vids. But, as Frank mentioned, you will start seeing some performance issues with streaming vid (especially HD vid) at a speed of 1.5 Mbps.



There was a time when I was thrilled to see speeds of 56k, versus 14k or 28k, on a dial up connection. This is when it took roughly 20 mins to a half hour to download a single song - possibly a number of hours for the whole album.

Answer 3

I would suggest that you see how you go first with this type connection, with 1.5Mbps/256kbps technically you can get speeds up to 187.5KBps for downloading this speed can also handle a couple of computers in a network just as long noone hogs the bandwidth you can always implement a software to control the distribution of the bandwidth anyways. But with the things you are wanting to do in the internet your bandwidth should be fine.



Good luck :)

Answer 4

It's not too fast, in fact it's pretty slow, but as long as you don't download a lot you should be fine. Try 1.5 mbps now and see if you like it. If not, upgrade.

Answer 5

The key words are "UP TO".

During "peak" hours, they COULD slow down to SLOW dial-up speeds.



You will find that the slower one will probably NOT be able to keep up with videos/movies very well.



It ALSO depends on HOW you are accessing the ISP.



(I had satellite inter-net for a while, and found that in the slow hours, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, it was VERY fast, but during the "peak" hours, it was VERY slow.)

Answer 6

thats a horrible speed. you'll get pretty annoyed with it fast. i run at about 20mbps/4583 and i cant complain about my download speeds. id recommend going with the atleast the 10mbps.