Is 20 GB enough to work from home?

[pro4100]

I just recently purchased a house under the impression that I could get cable internet and now that isn't the case. The fastest speed I can get is ATT 1.5 mbs and that isn't going to cut it I believe for what I do as far as work goes w/o using satellite service for faster speeds. I currently work from home and need at least 5-15mbs service and they provide that but only give 20GB a month. Would this be enough if all my work is internet based?

What I use & do daily:

-work from 8am to 5pm M-F & also have a family with 2 kids.
-surfing the web & entering information on sites. (7 windows open at one time)
-emails (at least 50-100 a day & some with screen shots)
-connecting to another computer in an office 3 hours away daily (using gotomypc.com)

cant think of anything else.

 

[strollin]

I've worked from home off and on for about 7 years now and currently work almost exclusively from home. For much of the time that I worked from home I had a connection that was 1.5MB or LESS and was able to work fine. I remotely connect to servers to do a lot of my work (developer) and also do things like participate in video conference meetings and the like. I currently have a 4MB connection and it is plenty fast for me to do my work.

I am fortunate that my connection does not have a data cap so I have never measured how much data I use on a month so I can't say whether a 20G cap would be sufficient for you.

A data cap is easier to deal with on a slow connection since the connection itself limits how fast you can use up your allotment.

The only issue I have is that when I need to download a large file to my local PC, the download is limited by my connection speed but I don't need to do that everyday so it's not a large impact.

 

[root]

I'm working from home tomorrow, (I work a couple of days from home every week.)

I'll tell you how much I've transferred at the end of the day.

my day will typically be spent receiving hundreds of emails, and connecting to servers via remote desktop.

(to be honest I've gone this before using a teathered cell phone as a modem, it's not huge amounts of data for the "work" aspect of it.)


you say surfing the internet, what's that mean to you? if it's regularly downloading hundreds of images because you like art websites, and all the graphics there are really high quality, then you may need more,

if surfing the internet means downloading loads of CD's then you may need more?

but honestly, 20GB is a pretty big chunk of data allowance.

 

[iPwn]

-connecting to another computer in an office 3 hours away daily (using gotomypc.com)

Satellite will be the worst option you can employ.

On your 1.5m connection, 1.5M is the maximum rate at which data can be transferred... similarly with the satellite option, 5-15mbs is the max data rate.

The other factor you're not considering is the connection latency. What that means is, everytime you send an command or request over the internet, that signal has to travel up to a satellite, down to a center, and then back. Once a constant stream is established, life is okay, but not before that. This is important because, well, everything you do is going to have a 1-5 second 'buffer' before results are returned.

Imagine using a remote desktop session where each command (move mouse, press key) is delayed by 1-5 seconds (one way!).

A client of mine has Satellite internet in a home of theirs, and remote'ing in to do any kind of support is almost impossible. I have to direct him/her what to do on screen, then wait until I see the result to tell them where to click next. A horrible connection for remote desktop services.

 

[setishock]

Check in to AT&T U-verse. I had it. It's great. I had the 12 down 5 up package then went up to 18 down 5 up. It's different from DSL. It's a whole lot quicker and it's not piggy backed to your phone.

 

[root]

a full day of working from home on RDP via VPN was only a couple of hundred megs.

 

[berry120]

you say surfing the internet, what's that mean to you? if it's regularly downloading hundreds of images because you like art websites, and all the graphics there are really high quality, then you may need more,

if surfing the internet means downloading loads of CD's then you may need more?

Perhaps a more common use case would be video streaming - bear in mind that if someone streams a HD film from Netflix, iplayer or similar every couple of nights, that's going to chew through 20GB like nothing else.

 

[Thatguy]

If it were me, I'd go for the slower DSL connection. It would likely be unlimited or have a much higher cap. My mom has similar speed DSL in a rural area, she can stream SD netflix and Youtube, no problem.

If you can get the full 1.5mbps I think that it would serve you much better than satellite, because as others have mentioned, latency is going to be terrible. Satellite will give you faster speed, but terrible latency, very very low data cap and will likely cost much more than the DSL.

---------- Post added at 06:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:52 PM ----------

Check in to AT&T U-verse. I had it. It's great. I had the 12 down 5 up package then went up to 18 down 5 up. It's different from DSL. It's a whole lot quicker and it's not piggy backed to your phone.

At&t Uverse IS DSL, but an upgraded version called VDSL2 in most cases. I have it and it has been fantastic. Chances are this person would get Uverse if it was available, since it would come over the same phone line.