2000: 3 km copper wire to the DSLAM: 8/1 Mbit/s, high latency
2014: Fiber to the neighborhood (FTTC)
2019: Fiber to the building (FTTB): 40 m copper wire to the DSLAM in the basement, 50/10 Mbit/s, VDSL2, 15 ms latency
2026: switch from VDSL2 to G.fast
erlangen:~ # speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Versatel Deutschland (83.135.119.63)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Net-D-Sign GmbH (Munich) [675.82 km]: 9.997 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 110.66 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 52.47 Mbit/s
erlangen:~ #
Living in an apartment and always been on ADSL Yes, via the (TV) cable was also an option but that was only attractive in a combo package and that was not attractive for me. ADSL eventually got me something like 25…30 Mbps download speeds, enough.
Three years ago fibers were installed up to the entrance of the apartment but not enough people interested to my it viable to bring fiber to the home.
Then I heard March 2025 about wireless 5G Internet, had a look at the Antenna Map:
Two base stations, both visible (direct line) on 400 meter. Price was even better than ADSL, 25 Euro with 5 Euro discount, so 20 Euro per month so I switched.
> speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Scaleway (51.158.152.87)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Deutsche Telekom (Dusseldorf) [182.10 km]: 139.821 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 103.11 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 45.61 Mbit/s
Not bad but this morning I got a server more close by and got ~120 Mbps down and ~ 75 Mbps up, more matching what another speedtest gave:
In my experience the speed of download depends on the originating server; this varies dramatically between servers though, obviously, I have become more aware of the servers than can serve data more quickly the faster my own connection (which has been fibre to the neighbourhood since 2007) has become over the years as the provider has upgraded its capacity.
On a 1 GB cable connection for some time, Cable router is only good for up to 800mbps, but still get 100-110Mbps download speed, there is fiber infrastructure running by the house, but our connection is unlimited and cheap…
Normally I get openSUSE Iso images in less than three minutes, beats waiting days like I use to on dial up…
Maybe you should contact your Internet Provider. I had a similar problem back when we moved into this new home. Internet speed was horrible, and random outages (that lasted only a few minutes).
So I called my provider - the technician came out and said, “I see John (I made that name up) did the original installation - he is known to rush the install and do sloppy work”. After an hour, the new technician came back and said he corrected a couple of original installation problems (bad fiber hardware issues). Since that fix, have had zero issues, related to speed and connectivity.
Something else I’ve noticed. I did a speed test at Ookla (shown in my previous Reply), CloudFlare, Google Fiber, and AT&T. CloudFlare showed the worse statistics … mainly because the test server used is 250+ miles away. Google Fiber, Ookla, and AT&T used test servers very close by (less than 10 miles away) … and those three also showed my Upload speed is faster than Download speed (very odd).
Was preparing to do that as you wrote. I took 2 cloudflare screenshots here, first one here while two Rokus were also feeding TVs, the second on this without Rokus running. Then I spent an hour on a test computer installing and setting up Firefox ESR 140, including constructing a user.js file so I don’t have to go through that again with any new FF profiles, then running cloudflare on it for a third screenshot to attach to the email sent to my ISP.
My brother has a spare/unused older Asus Chromebox setup with DHCP, so on request of my ISP to test hooked up directly to the cable modem, I used it and got a trivial 1.6Mbps better down and 4.1Mbps worse up, so at least I know it isn’t my router holding me back. ISP wanted me to retest with fast.com and speedtest.net. Both reported roughly 25% faster down than cloudflare.
It has solid speed and is reliable too. They only guarantee 100 Mbps down/100 Mbps up, but everyone has 200 down and they said they don’t know if that will change or not. I think the competition is kicking in and we didn’t have any forever. Fiber has just been here about a year.
I don’t see needing 1Gbit except for maybe gaming? Maybe file sharing where you could connect to many people and get full speed out of it.
I’m real happy about being able to update and download in a reasonable amount of time. And there’s tons of streaming TV, too. They sold part of the C-Band satellite spectrum to the telcoms for 5G and I have a 5G cell tower just south of me. The interference wipes out the signal to my 8 foot satellite dish in the winter when there’s no leaves on the trees to block the signals from hitting the ground (dish). Also, channels are going streaming only and dropping like flies. We’re using our share of streaming!
I’m right in the middle of America (Missouri), on the Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri state lines (no European satellite reception like the east coast). Well, I could walk to any of those states if I really wanted too, even if it did take quite a while.
I feel your pain, my secondary network (5G) which is the stable one when weather permits is also 30/30 Mbps. I don’t care much for speed, only for relatively low jitter and no packet loss. The network techs said they can’t get any more than 30 to my building with an HV power line in between.
My primary is fiber 200/200, but it has really bad peering and I have to scrape by using a VPN to a nearby DC.
My cableco has today informed me that little better than Cloudflare’s report can be expected with my SB6121 3.0 modem. Both fast and speedtest reported faster downloading, up around 120Mbps, than Cloudflare.
