[lug] Home Broadband Download Speeds

[Lori Reed]

I'm wondering, of what use is 20 Mbps download speed for home use?

The 9 Mbps we get from Comcast is 50% more than is necessary to stream 
DVD quality from Netflix, and on weekend nights Netflix often stalls at 
that, and I doubt it's a "last mile" issue.

Nothing I've downloaded has *ever* come close to that speed so I have to 
assume it's either slow servers on the far end, or clogged tubes in the 
middle.

Even loading web pages with Firefox v3.6 seems to be more dependent on 
how many ads from who knows how many servers than any inefficiencies on 
my end.

So what am I missing in terms of web content? Multiple video streams (I 
can see that being an issue, but so far we haven't done that)? What's 
out there to demonstrate that I'm still living in the steam age of the 
Intertubes?

Thanks in advance,
Lori