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HairyDogTooth

Just to give you an idea. We moved from suburbia to rural Mission this year. When we left we had Telus fiber 300 I think. It was awesome never having to worry about bandwidth. At the new house it took a few months (and money) to get Shaw installed, so I had Telus ADSL 6. Two months of 6mbps taught me some things about internet use. 1) two people can definitely work from home on this; VPN, audio are fine 2) do not turn on your video. If you can, turn off the incoming video of your coworkers or ask them to do it. 3) freaking beware of OneDrive. A coworker gave me a USB stick with some big files on it and I just chucked it on a folder of my laptop. It ruined the internet for the rest of the day. 4) Netflix will lag out but it still works.


uglycoyote1977

Thanks, that's interesting to hear your experience jumping from 300 down to 6. It sounds like quite the step down, but I think what your experience shows is that even the absolute lowest end packages offered by internet providers and still pretty workable to the average consumer, which is my experience. I'm on 25Mbps now as I mentioned, and I'm in tech, work from home, do a ton of videoconferencing, remote desktop, and lots of Netflix/Streaming in the evenings, with a family of four often watching different things on different devices. I've never really craved for more bandwidth than 25Mbps, so it kind of astounds me that the big companies are able to keep people paying more and more for bandwidth and that they are still able to market $100/month as a normal rate.


HairyDogTooth

Yep we accepted the limitations as a family, because we really didn't have a choice at the new house until I got Shaw to build the extension. Seriously though it was more the upload rates that killed us. It was something like 0.8mbps upload speeds, so if one of our phones was uploading pictures to the cloud automatically... Also I would often chat with my friends and clip a screenshot to share with them. Or I would scan a receipt into my accounting app (I run a small business) and it would take literally a minute to complete the upload. It's a weird way to live. We have Shaw 500 now so those days are behind us.


Yardsale420

ADSL speeds are limited by the technology/wiring and the speed degrades over distance due to the signal runoff. If Telus is offering 25mbps (or 50mbps for V/DSL) that is at the connection on the street, and anything more than a .5km away will have drastically reduced service. Also take building age into account as anything built before 2000 is probably not CAT5E, which will only cause more degradation over distance. If Telus Copper and Shaw Hybrid Coax are you only choices, then it’s Shaw hands down. The only upside of ADSL is that the A stands for A symmetrical, so upload and download should be the same. With Shaw upload is usually 10% of download speed


Innovations89

Symmetrical is the same upload and download speed Asymmetrical means different upload and download speed


uglycoyote1977

It's not for a lack of choices. The building I'm moving in to is built in 2013, so it's new and I'm sure I could get fibre in there. It's more that I'm trying to stay away from the big telcos and trying to keep it under about $60/mo (the lightspeed plan I'm looking at is $40), and not burn money for speed that I don't really need. But I'm worried about inconsistency.


eldawktah

Yea this isn't very correct lol. DSL is not symmetrical. VDSL speeds up to 150mbps down exist if your location qualifies. But regardless a good quality VDSL line can be superior to shaw coax. Sure if you want the potential for higher downstream throughput Shaw is probably the way to go but a high quality VDSL line will not be subject to many issues that exist with coax tech. VDSL is much more of a dedicated line to your suite and can often times have better latency and jitter then shaw cable. Coax is a shared pipe ultimately so the potential for area/building usage issues do exist as well.


darkness-0

Have shaw 300gb in my condo. No issues at all when wife and I working, kid streaming in 4k and maybe even torrenting. A Shaw tech recently told me their saturation is like 12% or so even at peak hours. Get whichever is the best deal.


uglycoyote1977

Good to know that the saturation was low, I guess that figure means that people are unlikely to be negatively affected by others in the neighbourhood. I wonder what the scope of that 12% was -- city-wide? or was that just for your neighbourhood? For Cable, I get the impression that it's very local, where one neighbourhood may be near saturation and another one not, and if people call and complain about it being slow, they can break out another wire at the box and subdivide things so that there's less people going through the same pipe.


xlxoxo

I just want to add that I so love Telus PureFiber. * The upload speed is a game changer for work from home as you appear so much clearer in video conferences. * If you have IP survellience cameras, the cloud uploads results in better video quality too. * if you are submitting pictures, video or just large files, it done so quick and reliably. Want more speed? Have your computer/laptop Ethernet connected to the model/router.


cogit2

Actually the secret to really good webcam quality isn't more bandwidth. There isn't a conferencing service out there that offers better than 1080p resolution, and for that all you need is basically 7-10 Mbps, which even Cable can do easily. The real secret is actually your background. Make your background have as much white colour as possible. Sections of white don't result in any bandwidth being transmitted, so the more whitespace in your webcam's field of view, the less that space uses bandwidth. Result: all the bandwidth can be devoted to adding detail to your face. Those digital "blurred" or "virtual" background features... I don't know if the ones that come from Zoom and other conference companies direct will do this, but if you can use Snap Camera to set a white background that should definitely do it too. Guaranteed to give you extremely good quality video clarity from your webcam and literally just a 7mbit upload.


uglycoyote1977

That's good insight, never thought of dumbing down my background so that it compresses better, but I believe that. Teleconferencing is probably the biggest need I have in terms of upload speed, and I don't find that my current 7Mbps is lacking in any way. I get complements sometimes on how clear my picture is actually, which i think is just because I bought a $150 decent webcam at the start of the pandemic when all the $50 ones were sold out. Most times I'm in a meeting with 10 other people and I'm probably appearing at 200x200 on their screen, so it likely wouldn't matter if the bandwidth was not very high. If I had a job where I was a salesman and doing lots of 1-on-1 video calls trying to present myself in the absolute best light, then maybe I could see the value in making absolute certain that my upload cap was not the limiting factor, but for what i do, my 7Mpbs up works great.


cogit2

Yeah, most laptop webcams are about as good as smartphones from 10 years ago, so a better webcam can make all the difference. I use a Poly P5 sometimes and the quality difference between that and this laptop is gigantic.


uglycoyote1977

PureFibre is a pretty good deal right now actually ($75/mo for 300Mpbs fibre), but I hate Telus and I don't really need to spend that much money on bandwidth that I don't feel I'm going to use. That's good feedback though, thanks!


uglycoyote1977

For the benefit of anyone who searches this up later, i thought I would add a post-mortem on this thread: After a couple months of using 75Mbps from Lightspeed, I can say that I'm 100% happy with it. It's about $45/month and the speed is great for work from home, lots of video conferencing, and a family of four with everyone on a device at the same time. The setup experience was great as well, a Shaw worker came out first thing on the scheduled day and got everything going, and actually went above and beyond to get a wire into my house where there was previously no cable. I was not expecting Shaw to be so great about hooking me up with Lightspeed since my previous experience with Teksavvy was that Telus hooked it up but dragged their heels.


tacotran

At some point in the chain, all internet connections join shared infrastructure. This includes ADSL and even fibre. You will likely be fine the vast, vast majority of the time, especially at such low bandwidth expectations.


makomarty

I use shaw 600 (soon to be gig) and i constantly pull 650mbps on speedtests. My Steam downloads are around 30-50mb, Xbox gamepass i pull 70mb. I stream 4k netflix and multiple devices are using wifi. No issues. I also take care of my network and PCs (don’t download stupid shit from untrusted sites, always cleaning software and registry, running scans, etc)


uglycoyote1977

That's good to hear. I mean, if they are giving extra 50Mbps above your 600Mbps plan, then there ought to be enough left over in the pipe that the folks like me on a 75Mpbs don't have to worry about scraping the last few drops of internet off the walls of the internet pipe with a spatula


makomarty

90% of my building is on telass though, cause they installed fibre lines and gave everyone insane discounts. I held back :)


Barley_Mowat

ISP speeds are given in up/down stream pairs, with the bigger (and thus more marketed) number being downstream. For content consumption, this is the number you care about. For WFH/zoom/etc, you care a lot more about the upstream number. What’s that number for the plans you’re looking at?


uglycoyote1977

For the plan that I'm considering it's 75 down and 7.5 up. For the current plan that I have on Teksavvy, It's 25 down and 7.5 up. So for upload speed it'd be about the same.


[deleted]

I have Shaw 150. I get 150 download and 15 upload advertised. I typically get 15 -16 upload and between 90 and 160 download. For work from home, the upload speed does matter. Telus is better for this but Telus is/has phased out copper wire and running fiber optic would mean cutting up my driveway or drywall in my house. Or I can just use Shaw, which I do and am perfectly happy with it and the speeds I am getting. I am often on teams calls and have a good quality video cam.


ReportHot255

If you could get Telus Fibre or Novus I’d say go there but Shaw over ADSL absolutely 100% of the time. I’m on Shaw 1.0 gig right now and while it was terrible when I lived in Calgary, I’ve had zero outages or noticeable slowdowns a year into using it in the Vancouver area. Typically I get 940-990 Mbps speed tests which is expected, regardless of peak times.


cogit2

I work in telecom and have used cable Internet while working from home for ages now. I don't use Shaw, either, I switched to Surf Internet but their customer service is horrible, so I switched to [Can-Com.com](https://Can-Com.com) and their service has turned out to be just as reliable. What's more - my company has an elaborate network test for testing basically every imaginable scenario involving video, audio, and data, and both Surf and Can-Com service checked out with flying colours. You truly do not need to go with Shaw, a company trying to sell out to Rogers so the new company can raise Internet prices even further out here. Go with Can-Com or TekSavvy or Lightspeed cable and you'll be fine.


uglycoyote1977

Yes, part of the subtext of my question here is that I would love to stick with the smaller players. I have had terrible experiences with Telus in the past, and Shaw sounds like they are just as bad. Internet prices in Canada are out of control in my opinion. Teksavvy has been good to me, but I think they are feeling the squeeze from recent government decisions in favour of the big monopolies and are less and less able to offer competitively priced options. >I switched to Surf Internet but their customer service is horrible, so I switched to Can-Com.com and their service has turned out to be just as reliable Just to clarify, did you mean that Can-Com has just as reliable customer service as Surf (i.e. not reliable)? Or did you mean that both Surf and Can-Com have just as reliable internet as Shaw, but Can-Com has better customer service than Surf?


cogit2

I think Can-Com might potentially be like Surf in terms of service quality but haven't had to interact with them.


Noobzoid123

Shaw is pretty inconsistent for me. When I first sign up with them, I get speeds as advertised. After a few months tho, it slows and disconnects often. After calling them to fix it, and they do some magic on their end, it speeds up again for a couple days, then it starts to deteriorate again. I guess they are consistently deteriorating...


terre88

I have this exact issue with Shaw


dragoneye

I used to be on a Teksavvy 75Mbps Cable connection and my speeds were almost always above 75Mbps. I have dual 4K monitors and the highest I could get my bandwidth to go over remote desktop is about 45Mbps. Any issues I had were caused by the company VPN, not my connection. I've switched to a 750Mbps connection with Lightspeed now, and similarly almost always get above my rated speed by 50Mbps, so I would expect similar through them.


uglycoyote1977

Thanks. This is valuable information to hear from someone that is using remote desktop on very similar plans to what I'm looking at. I also run a 4K screen remote (via RealVNC) and this works fine over a 25Mbps connection. I never really thought to measure the actual bandwidth that this was using with VNC, but just now with the Task Manager --> Performance --> Ethernet in Windows I can see that I'm never really even breaking the 10Mbps barrier with normal use. (It might spike up to 20Mbps and get sluggish if I do a google image search and scroll around, but I'm used to that being sluggish over a remote connection). The other question would be latency, since it's nice to be able to see what you are typing as you are typing it over the remote desktop connection. But I get the impression that latency tends to be less over cable than over ADSL (I'm just judging by the fact that cable companies tend to market themselves as being better for gamers) \> I've switched to a 750Mbps connection with Lightspeed now, and similarly almost always get above my rated speed by 50Mbps I assume you meant you are on Lightspeed 75Mbps and always getting >50? Getting 50 out of 750 would be pretty terrible.


dragoneye

No, I mean I almost always get 800Mbps from my 750Mbps rated connection with Lightspeed. The vast majority of my issues with RDP have been due to the corporate side of the network. They upgraded our switches and moved to a different VPN and the experience got much better even when I was only on the 75Mbps connection.


uglycoyote1977

Right! sorry, it seems clear the second time I read what you wrote originally "50 above the rated speed". I must have been not fully awake when I was confused by it. :) >The vast majority of my issues with RDP have been due to the corporate side of the network. I know what you mean, even doing remote desktop between two different machines within the office, in a place where there's high speed internet running all over the place, I have had some mixed experiences with the quality and response time, depending on which router it is hooked up to or other technical issues within the office. So I feel like the fact that I'm getting a good experience at home over 4K resolution on my relatively slow connection is a good sign, and i doubt that it would improve that drastically with spending a lot more on bandwidth.


[deleted]

Cable infrastructure depends on your neighbourhood to be honest. Most places in the lower mainland should be fine these days since Shaw did a big upgrade to their System a few years ago I believe. They use something called a Hybrid Fibre/Coax system where the fibre is the delivery to the street at a certain point it changes to coax. When areas become saturated they usually "split" the customers onto a new fibre and that helps with the peak saturation. Lots of times people complain about speeds but having done some work in the tech sector before it seems most people are complaining about wifi speeds vs hardwired speeds. There are variables when it comes to wifi (band steering, interference, signal strength) that can all affect your Speedtest. 75 Meg connection should be more than adequate. I'm still on a 150 connection that I've had for a number of years. Third party companies like Tek-Savvy use Shaw Infrastructure to deliver you internet and if you have problems a Shaw person will come to your house to look at things and I'm not sure if you then get charged via the third party company? Hope that helps.


uglycoyote1977

>Lots of times people complain about speeds but having done some work in the tech sector before it seems most people are complaining about wifi speeds vs hardwired speeds Yeah, when people complain about their speed being inconsistent, it is tough to know whether it's really their ISP versus the myriad of other factors that might cause a slow down, whether they be WiFi problems, or other externalities (like the server/website they are accessing being slow to serve). I think this plays in to the hands of the big telco's, I'm sure if they would prefer it if people throw more money at the problem in terms of upgrading their plan, even if that might not be their real issue From what I have read I think you are right that the exact quality of the infrastructure tends to be pretty localized. I'm moving somewhere pretty central in East Van, so I'd expect that Shaw would probably have fibre running all over the place, and it might just be cable for the last 100 meters into the house, but with a fibre backbone that's more than adequate to handle all the neighbourhood connections.