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I have an offer for internet connection, where they offer me these speeds for a symetric and non aggregated connections over fiber optics (upload/download):

  • 10/10 Mbit/s
  • 20/20 Mbit/s
  • 30/30 Mbit/s

Where in comparison regular internet providers offer these speeds (assuming regular internet connection is aggregated and non symetric), for example (upload/download):

  • 5/30 Mbit/s
  • 20/300 Mbit/s
  • 30/600 Mbit/s

My question is, is there a way to figure out how fast are these business internet connection speeds comparing with regular aggregated internet connection? Best example would be to explain it on downloading 1GB file.

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    Since most Internet traffic is download, faster download is, well, faster. Upload is important if you are hosting a server or uploading large files somewhere. Note that speed is not the only factor between residential and business service. The later often comes with better SLA's and other services. Check with your provider for that.
    – Ron Trunk
    May 28, 2020 at 16:12
  • The "shared", asymmetric plans are almost certainly "best effort", so the speed you actually get can, and will, vary. You could see 30down/5up and you could see 3d/0u. The "business class", symmetric plans most likely include some SLA assurance of performance.
    – Ricky
    May 28, 2020 at 21:52

2 Answers 2

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A 1 GB file is approximately 8 Gb (bits). So divide 8 Gb by the download speed to get an approximate transfer time.

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  • So if I did the math right, it should take about 13.5 minutes to download 1GB over 10/10 Mbps speed, right?
    – mrrobot
    May 29, 2020 at 10:36
  • That’s the answer I got too.
    – Ron Trunk
    May 29, 2020 at 11:13
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assuming regular internet connection is aggregated and non symetric

Regular Internet connections aren't aggregated. Even multi-pair SDSL is multi-lane and there's no difference in performance to single-lane from a subscriber's POV.

Whether a connection is symmetric or not depends on your data plan. You need to decide if it fits your workload. As a rule of thumb, symmetric is fine for Internet access but bad for offering services to the Internet.

There's a bit more to an Internet connection than just bare speed:

  • availability
  • latency
  • oversubscription ratio (real bandwidth at any time of day)
  • included services (DNS, email, ...)
  • SLAs (guarantees for above)
  • dynamic or static IP address(es)
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