384kpbs vs. 3.0 mpbs High Speed Question

[KingKoopa]

So I have Grande Cable and I live in an apartment with 3 computers. When I called to set up my account, I asked for the basic high speed (384kpbs download). I get my first bill and the significantly more expensive "upgraded high speed" (3.0 mpbs download) is on my bill.

I call to complain and after an enormous hassle since somehow another person's SSN and phone number were on my account, I manage to tell them I want to change to the service I originally ordered.

The woman asked if i was using a router and i said yes (i have a WAN) and how many PCs I had and I said 3 and she said, "oooooooooooooooh nooooooo... there is your problem right there. you can't split the 384kpbs signal... if you do, you won't be able to do anything on any of the computers."

I know that splitting a signal deteriorates the strength, but this seems a little misguided to me that I wouldn't be able to have more than one computer on a 384 kpbs bandwidth.

I suppose it's worth 10x the speed for probably a marginal amount of money (when split between myself and my two roommates), but I suspect this is just some ******** they're feeding me to force me into the higher priced upgrade.

 

[dustin_c1]

There's no signal degradation issue at all. You are misunderstanding. This is an issue of shared bandwith.

384kb/s over 3 computers is doable. If you use applications that only have intermittent data transfers (email, general web surfing) you should be ok. If you download large files, surf multimedia heavy websites, play games on the internet, use webcams, etc, you will certainly want to install software on each computer that limits transfer speeds or you will run into situations where one computer hogs all the bandwidth and chokes the other two. That will be irritating.

While doable, it is a bit low for three computers if they are all going to be used at the same time. You should notice a difference if you upgrade to the 3mb/s connection. Especially if you use a lot of bandwidth. If the cost isn't that much, definitely go for the 3mb/s connection.

 

[KingKoopa]

thanks for the advice. i think i'll stick it out with the 3.0, because i am almost always downloading a large torrent file and i don't want to choke off my roomies.