If you've checked your home internet plan details or shopped for a new one recently, you might have noticed that the download speeds are far higher than upload speeds. For instance, Xfinity plans in my area currently offer download tiers of 300 Mbps, 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps, but the broadband facts show all three of these plans have the same typical upload speed of 117 Mbps. You'll need to jump to the 2 Gbps plan to see the upload speed increase to around 293 Mbps.

As it turns out, there are a few reasons for this, and modern connections aren't subject to all the same limitations.

The most pertinent point is a practical matter: Most people download much more than they upload. Almost every way we interact with the internet involves downloading, and what we download is typically much larger than what we upload.

Think about how often you stream video or music compared to uploading it yourself, for instance. Another major download area is installing and updating apps, games and system software, which takes a lot of network bandwidth. Even standard browsing has you download much more data from webpages than the bits of text you upload to log in or post a comment.

Unless you transfer massive files with cloud storage, stream on Twitch or have multiple people taking video calls all day, you probably don't need a fast upload speed. The average person will appreciate having 80 or 90 percent of their bandwidth used to keep downloads quick , rather than having uploads and downloads be roughly equal.

Source link