Nifty Stopwatch

My answer would be no.

It’s true that most of the time you do not need super fast speed but there are times when it comes in handy. Downloading files is a time when faster is better. An example that I just encountered a few days ago was before stage6 went down I was downloading some videos. Now I am on a 10mbit connection and even though it maxes out at about 1.1MB/S you could always be getting the files quicker. The content I was downloading was high definition divx files. Now lets say that the video is 220MB that would take me around 200 seconds to download which is around 3 and 1/3 minutes. Now if I were streaming these videos I Wouldn’t need to have a 10mbit connection but when it comes to archiving them faster is better to me.

Uploading can never be to fast either as it is also a limiting factor. When it comes to off site backup upload can always be quicker. Even with 1mbps upload it still can take a while to upload data. As download gets quicker upload needs to also get faster because as you download you also need to send data to the server that you are getting the data from.

Now a problem with having super fast internet is that it can only be as quick as your ISP’s network. Your connection could be 100mbit but your ISP only has one 100mbit connection for the route that the data your downloading is coming from. In that case you will under most circumstances never get 100mbps. Broadband reports has a good article which can be found here.

While there are other reasons why the internet can never be to fast they are for different types of things that residential users normally would not do. These are an entire new post that i might write in the future.