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
>>
>
>
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