ORLANDO, Fla. – What to Know:
The speed internet companies promote is typically the download speed, while upload speeds may be much lower.
A higher Mbps number does not always translate into a better day-to-day experience, meaning some families could be paying for speed they rarely use.
Speed matters, but it is only one piece of what determines whether your home internet service feels reliable.
Today’s Dollars & Sense takes a closer look at home internet service, including download speed, upload speed, connection type and, just as important, the price you pay.
Consider this your Internet 101 guide.
This is not a head-to-head matchup between one provider and another. Instead, the goal is to break down the basics so you know what you are buying and can decide what level of service makes sense for your household.
The conversation could easily expand into cable TV, streaming platforms and the many other services that keep a modern home connected. To keep things simple, though, the focus here is the internet connection itself. That connection has become the backbone for much of daily life, powering TVs, computers, phones, security cameras, smart appliances and more. Deloitte’s Connected Consumer research found that in 2023, the average U.S. household had about 21 connected devices across 13 different categories.
Lesson #1: What does Mbps actually mean?
Let’s start with Mbps: megabits per second. I know that doesn’t really help a lot, so let’s simplify.
Despite the way internet service is marketed, Mbps isn’t necessarily a measure of how fast your internet connection will feel – it’s a measure of data transfer rate, which tells us how much data the connection can move each second. That’s essentially what bandwidth is, the size of your highway. More Mbps gives the connection more capacity to move traffic at the same time; it doesn’t necessarily increase the speed limit or make each individual trip happen faster.
As an example, a 1,000 Mbps connection has twice as much bandwidth as a 500 Mbps connection. That means it can theoretically handle twice as much data at once – but it doesn’t mean a webpage will load twice as fast or a Netflix movie in 4K will look twice as good. So, with a 1,000 Mbps “highway” you’ll have room for that 4K Netflix movie, your spouse can surf the internet on a phone, and your kids can stream YouTube and play Fortnite.
Some totals for our hypothetical home:
Netflix recommends at least 15 Mbps for that 4K movie.
Your kid watching YouTube in 4K might need another 20 Mbps.
Someone else could be on a 1080p Zoom call using about 4 Mbps.
Meanwhile, another family member could be playing Fortnite, someone could be browsing the web, and phones, smart-home devices, and other connected gadgets could all be online.
Even allowing some extra room for all of that activity, we’re still nowhere near using the full capacity of a 500 Mbps connection, much less 1,000 Mbps. In fact, simply adding up the recommended bandwidth for that 4K Netflix stream, 4K YouTube stream, and 1080p Zoom call gets us to only about 39 Mbps – less than 8% of a 500 Mbps connection.
So, why does my internet still sometimes seem slow or why do we still get buffering?
Lesson #2: Because in most homes, there are actually two highways.
Wait, what?
This is one of the first places the educated consumer has the upper hand over someone who hasn’t read up on broadband.
The 500 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps scenario we just described is essentially the width (or capacity) of the highway connecting your home to your internet service provider (ISP). Those examples are at their best, if you are connected directly to your ISP-provided modem or gateway through a physical cable.
You’re not.
Your desktop? Maybe – if it’s in the same room as the connection that’s been dropped into your home, and it’s tethered via an Ethernet cable (that yellow or blue cable that looks like a phone plug but is way bigger and way thicker). But your phone and tablet – and probably many of your TVs and laptops – aren’t physically connected…
And that means another highway comes into play: the wireless connection (Wi-Fi) between your router and the device you’re actually using.
Again, let’s simplify: think of your ISP connection as the interstate leading to your home, but the Wi-Fi in your home isn’t as robust. It’s not a highway – it’s more like a road: a local network distributing that highway traffic once it gets to you. You can have a 10-lane interstate leading into town, but if the last few miles of the trip require squeezing everything onto congested two-lane roads, adding another five lanes to the interstate isn’t going to get you home any faster.
And that about sums up your internet connection.
You may be paying for 1,000 Mbps service coming into your home, but the television buffering in the back bedroom may be getting only a fraction of that because it’s using Wi-Fi. Walls, distance from the router, interference, the age and capabilities of your Wi-Fi router, and even the age and capability of the device itself can all affect that wireless connection.
In other words, upgrading from 500 Mbps to 1,000 Mbps may not fix your buffering problem at all.
Lesson #3: By the way, there’s more traffic using the highway than you realize.
Remember those 21 connected devices we mentioned earlier? Yeah – they’re using up space on the highway and roads as well. Mind you, they’re not all using an equal share of your internet connection – and many of them may be using almost no bandwidth at all at any given moment.
A smart thermostat checking the temperature or a smart light waiting for you to tell it to turn on creates very little traffic. Downloading a new app or video game to a console, backing up thousands of photos to the cloud, or uploading video from a security camera is a whole ‘nother story.
And then there’s the issue of timing.
If you’re watching Netflix while someone else in the home is downloading a massive video game update, another person is on a video call, your phones are backing up photos, and several security cameras are sending video to the cloud, all of that traffic may be trying to use your connection at the same time.
That’s when the extra lanes provided by a higher-bandwidth internet connection can become valuable – assuming, of course, your home network can efficiently distribute all that traffic.
But here’s an important distinction: having 21 devices connected to your home network doesn’t necessarily mean you need enough bandwidth for all 21 to operate at full capacity simultaneously. What matters is how many devices are actively moving significant amounts of data at the same time and what they’re doing.
That’s why there’s no single answer to the question, “How many Mbps does my family need?”
A household with two people and 30 mostly idle smart-home devices could use less bandwidth than a household with four people simultaneously streaming 4K video, gaming, downloading files, and working from home.
Lesson #4: Not all lanes go in the same direction
OK – disclosure time. This entire piece was originally based on one observation by one of our bosses: upload and download “speeds” aren’t always the same. He’s right – and this is one of the most important parts of this story.
But before we get to that, a quick explanation: I just used the word “speed” despite previously explaining that Mbps doesn’t necessarily tell you how fast your internet will feel. The industry commonly calls Mbps internet “speed,” and technically it is a data-transfer rate – how much data can move each second. Throughout this story, we’re thinking of that rate as the capacity of our highway.
OK – now that we have that settled…
Internet advertisements don’t always make something obvious: your highway may have 500 lanes (500 Mbps) coming toward you – but only 20 lanes (20 Mbps) going the other way. That’s an asymmetrical connection – the capacity is different depending on the direction the data is traveling. On the other hand, with a symmetrical connection, upload and download capacity are the same: for example, 500 Mbps down (into your home) and 500 Mbps up (out of your home).
Typically, but not always, cable connections are asymmetrical: faster download capability than upload capability. Fiber on the other hand is usually symmetrical: upload and download capacity are the same. Why should you care? Because symmetrical data transfers matter when your household sends a lot of data out to the internet, and not just when you receive it.
For years, upload capability wasn’t particularly important for most households because we mostly consumed the internet: loading webpages, downloading files, streaming music or movies. Providers therefore built networks with a huge highway coming toward us and a much smaller one going away from us.
Things, however, have changed.
Think about what modern households now upload: Zoom and Teams video, cloud backups, photos and videos, security-camera footage, smart home commands, livestreams, large work files, social-media videos, and files created by content creators.
Let’s go with a real-world example of a 20 GB file (roughly the size of an hour of compressed 4K video, depending on a few variables):
At 500 Mbps, the theoretical minimum to upload that 20 GB file would be about 5 minutes, 20 seconds.
At 20 Mbps, however, the theoretical minimum to upload that same 20 GB file would be about 2 hours and 13 minutes.
Big difference? Big difference. If you want to measure what your upload and download speeds are, follow this link for a more detailed explanation and this one to take you to a web-based test.
Lesson #5: How much internet do you really need?
And now we’ve arrived at the question that could actually save you some money: how much internet do you really need?
Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic number.
As we’ve already learned, the answer depends less on how many devices are connected to your network and more on what you’re doing with them – and how many people are doing those things at the same time.
A person living alone who primarily streams television, browses the web, checks email, and scrolls through social media may be perfectly happy with 100 Mbps. A family simultaneously streaming 4K video, working from home, gaming, and downloading large files may benefit from 300 or 500 Mbps. A smart home with a household of simultaneous heavy users may find a gigabit connection worthwhile.
But here’s the important part: buying more bandwidth than you need doesn’t necessarily make your internet experience better.
If 300 Mbps comfortably handles everything your household is doing, upgrading to 500 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps simply gives you more unused capacity. And if the real problem is weak Wi-Fi in the back bedroom, buying more bandwidth from your internet provider may not solve the problem at all.
So before upgrading, take inventory.
How many people are using your connection at the same time? What are they doing?
Are you primarily downloading data or do you regularly upload large amounts of it?
Are your problems happening throughout the house or only in certain rooms?
Then look beyond the biggest number in the advertisement.
Compare download and upload capacity.
Find out whether the connection is symmetrical or asymmetrical.
Look at the regular monthly price – not just the introductory offer – along with equipment charges, data limits, and other fees.
On that last note, the Federal Communications Commission requires internet providers to give consumers standardized information about their plans, including price, typical download and upload speeds, latency, and other important details.
Think of it as a nutrition label for your internet connection, because remember: the goal isn’t to buy the fastest internet connection available, it’s to buy enough internet for what your household actually does without paying for a bunch of empty lanes you’ll never use.
