I really need to save some money from month to month, and besides several other monthly expenses, I'm looking to cut corners on my phone/internet bill.
I currently have Bellsouth's DSL Xtreme service, which allows 3 Mbps downstream (so they say) and 384 kbps upstream. So far, I've had no problems with it whatsoever.
What I'm wondering is if, as a home user, I even need that much down/up capability. Here's what I typically do in a day:
Run Trillian
Have ClamWin Anti-Virus configured for automatic updates
Send anywhere from 10-30 emails per day, sometimes more
Run Limewire Pro occasionally
Run Firefox
Post to a few different forums
Run Peer Guardian 2
Run uTorrent with anywhere from 1-3 different torrents downloading at one time (I do rather harshly limit my uploading), reaching speeds of around 150-200 kB/s on very healthy torrents (sometimes more or less depending on the usual factors).
That's the gist of what my connection is used for (and I'm liable to do all of those things at one time).
If I switched to a connection that was 768 down/128 up, would my normal activities be terribly affected? Even with the 15% overhead, that would be roughly 650 Kbps downstream. Am I incorrect in thinking that I don't even get CLOSE to using all of the 3 Mbps download capability in a day? Am I not understanding how it works?
Help would be greatly appreciated. While I'm certainly not tech-illiterate, the guts of internet protocol aren't my forte.
I currently have Bellsouth's DSL Xtreme service, which allows 3 Mbps downstream (so they say) and 384 kbps upstream. So far, I've had no problems with it whatsoever.
What I'm wondering is if, as a home user, I even need that much down/up capability. Here's what I typically do in a day:
Run Trillian
Have ClamWin Anti-Virus configured for automatic updates
Send anywhere from 10-30 emails per day, sometimes more
Run Limewire Pro occasionally
Run Firefox
Post to a few different forums
Run Peer Guardian 2
Run uTorrent with anywhere from 1-3 different torrents downloading at one time (I do rather harshly limit my uploading), reaching speeds of around 150-200 kB/s on very healthy torrents (sometimes more or less depending on the usual factors).
That's the gist of what my connection is used for (and I'm liable to do all of those things at one time).
If I switched to a connection that was 768 down/128 up, would my normal activities be terribly affected? Even with the 15% overhead, that would be roughly 650 Kbps downstream. Am I incorrect in thinking that I don't even get CLOSE to using all of the 3 Mbps download capability in a day? Am I not understanding how it works?
Help would be greatly appreciated. While I'm certainly not tech-illiterate, the guts of internet protocol aren't my forte.