I would think hard about upgrading to a "faster" plan. The Wall St. Journal did  a study that basically said you gain no advantage for streaming media by upgrading to a faster plan. The WSJ article is behind a pay wall, but this article summarizes the results. https://medium.com/gowander/quick-take-wsj-the-truth-about-faster-internet-its-not-worth-it-c73d79a616b9 I've been working from home since last March when Covid started. I have two kids. One is in high school who is on Zoom all day for school. The other is streaming Pluralsight/Youtube/Coursera all day doing self-learning to become a software dev. I'm a DBA and am on all kinds of video calls/meetings throughout the day as well as transferring large files to/from my local network. My wife works remotely as well (altho not very many video meetings).  In the evening the kids are streaming movies/Youtube/video games/Discord/etc. With all this streaming going on I've never experienced any noticeable lag/dropouts in streaming or video conference calls. However, we consistently *almost* reach our 1.25TB cap each month. I have the Cox "Internet Preferred" plan (100Mb down/10 up). Since we are using a lot more data I'm considering upgrading our data cap (but not the speed). As far as the redundant ISP idea, I too worry about this. But my plan in the event of an ISP outage is to use my mobile phone as a hot spot. It'll work in a pinch to get me by until the outage is resolved. I've only ever experienced short outages with Cox, so having a backup ISP seems like a lot of wasted money in my opinion. But, you have to assess you're own situation and make the decisions that work for you. Something to consider.... Peter On 1/26/2021 3:49 PM, der.hans via PLUG-discuss wrote: > Am 26. Jan, 2021 schwätzte Mike Schwartz so: > > moin moin Mike, > >> OT: Off topic ... Hi from an old timer ... plus, a Question >> >> Please forgive me if I have been "out of radio contact" for too long. > > Yeah, it's been a while :). > > I believe both CenturyLink and Cox are offering Gigabit if you're in the > right part of town. At least Cox puts a data maximum on it. I believe > someone pointed out that a true gigabit connection can hit the monthly > maximum in a few hours. > > I was switching ISPs about the time that the pandemic started, so just > kept the old connection. I'm on one connection for dayjob and the family > uses the other. > > Since the pandemic has started both ISPs have had multi-hour outages, so > it's been handy to have a spare. Paying for two connections is a lot > cheaper than not getting paid due to overloaded bandwidth :). > > ciao, > > der.hans > >> (as in ... the "Wolf Brand chili" slogan) >>   (see, e.g., >> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Wolf+Brand+chili%22+slogan&t=h_&ia=web >> OR ... just click over to the "[[Slogan]]" *section* of the Wikipedia >> article about "Wolf Brand chili" ... at >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Brand_Chili#Slogan >> >> >> * * * Question: * * * >> We upgraded our ISP service (at home) when my wife started working from >> home ... around the beginning of the pandemic. It is still "DSL", -- >> through "CenturyLink" -- but supposedly it is now FOUR times faster than it >> used to be, (it "had been" ... for * * * *years. ** * *) >> >> I think we need something faster now. (We have 3 adults ... and make use of >> [either Zoom or "Google Meet" or something similar] a lot lately. >> >> Any advice? >> (including, whether or not we should have more than one ISP, just to be on >> the safe side?) >> >> Thanks in advance, ... >> >> Mike Schwartz >>    [elderly] timer >>    I may be in the Plug-Discuss archives ... if they [still] go "WABAC" >> ... >> Glendale  AZ >> schwartz@acm.org >> > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss