Some shampoo bottles come with directions to “lather, rinse, repeat.” We could never figure out why the process had to be done twice. One time always seemed to do the trick. We could only assume that the only reason shampoo companies wanted us to “repeat” is so we could go through the bottle twice as fast and buy more shampoo.

Internet speeds are getting faster and faster. Some providers are offering as much as 10 Gbps (Gigabits per second) of bandwidth. That’s 10,000 megabits! The average household runs smoothly on 50-100 megabits. Sound like overkill?

Another problem is that there is a great chance your home or business does not have the equipment to handle that kind of speed. So in most cases, that 10 gig pipe stops at the door and you are still using 100 mbps or less but paying for the higher speeds.

Of course you could upgrade ALL your equipment – routers, switches, cables, etc – at great expense but that still doesn’t mean you’ll have a supersonic Internet experience. Netflix takes about 5 Mbps to stream a movie. (Notice that’s an M, not a G).

In a previous blog titled “How Much Is Enough” we wrote back in 2019:

“So when your ISP sends you a “special offer” for more bandwidth at a fantastic price, take pause. A “Deal of the Decade” (which really doesn’t mean much with two weeks left in the decade) might seem like a bargain, but if you don’t need any more bandwidth than you already have, even a couple bucks more than you’re paying now is too much.

Like the car dealer who wants to sell you the upgrade package on the truck you have your heart set on because it can tow a two-ton sailboat up a steep grade to the lake when you don’t own a boat and there’s not a lake anywhere to be found.”

In a blog titled “Don’t Pay For What You Don’t Need,” we detailed a comprehensive network performance assessment that we ran for a client. We were able to demonstrate that the company was paying for much more bandwidth than they needed. 

In that blog we wrote: “Isn’t it nice to know exactly how much bandwidth you need instead of rolling the dice? This particular company was sold on 150 Mbps down and 150 up. As you can see, for a year, they didn’t even come close to those thresholds. That’s money that could have been spent elsewhere.”

So unless you’re streaming a thousand Netflix programs at the same time, there’s a great chance your home or business will never need anything close to 10 Gbps. Save your money.

If you really want to be sure, find a company that can perform a comprehensive network performance assessment so you’ll know exactly what you need.