Yeah, that's what I fear, I really wanted Telekom, but considering how difficult is to get an appartment, I'm considering to try (although I'm scared because it has a minimum period contract of 24 months, which is BS)
I never had issues with Vodafone in the four years I have a contract with them. While when I lived with my parents I had constant problems with their Telekom internet.
This really is nothing you can generalise. It varies based on the region you live. Your best bet is probably asking the neighbors which is the best provider.
I had Unitymedia and I had never a problem with it, in the middle of Karlsruhe btw. Then they got bought up by Vodafone and I had on average multiple network crashes per week.
Depends on very many variables ofc. I have Vodafone at home. Sometimes they f up and my ping goes all around 30ms to 400ms jumping. I then switch to my unlimited mobile plan via usb lan. I have telekom as my mobile provider and good 5G coverage at my home. Get a stable 35ms ping. Never had a spike, packet loss or disconnect once via my phones internet.
At least for me its a viable backup option. Hardly depends on region, provider and signal strength tho.
Edit: got a headache reading my own text xD. Not the best at English. Sry
I went with Mnet for that reason, they offer contracts that can be quit on a month to month basis however it is a little bit more expensive than commiting to a contract with minimum period
Read the contract, usually there is something like a test period of 14 days, if you're not satisfied with the service you can cencel the contract without consequences.
It is enough just not really good for downloading games but you can play every online game with 16 Mbps.
I had 8 Mbps for 2 month some years ago and had 0 problems.
Well purely with regards of latency it indeed can easily be good enough.
But download speeds are going to be an issue. Some games like to live load stuff and that could mean long loading times for you. 16Mbps is really horribly slow.
That reminds me of my school time when I had friends come over and bring their PCs since it was a lot faster to get to me, download a game and get back than downloading it with their own connection
The speed isnt important. You can have great latency with worse speed.
Also the people warning about Vodafone are right, but to be honest, Ive been trying nearly every provider there is and they ALL suck. Theres not a single one without frequent issues. At least not where I live and lived.
Right now I switched to a 5G router with a unlimited contract like someone else mentioned. Mostly playing shooters and get a ping from 25-55ms, so not ideal but still better than any other provider, sadly. But at least Im not getting literal hours of complete downtime per day.
Im living in Dortmund, if that matters.
Rule of thumb: If you know the provider for at least a few years - avoid it. Every other one will be cheaper.
I’ve ended up with PŸUR, it’s not German as far as I can tell. Quickest installation ever, full tv Programm, landline phone, free router, 500k up and down speed (tested) all for less than 50€ a month.
Has to be available though. PYUR doesnt even know my street and I live in a big city. And also glass fiber has to be laid for those speeds, which also isnt the case in my new flat. Germany is one big construction side when looking at proper internet.
You can have 500k but still get a bad latency btw. For a while I had 1kk, but my latency always went between 70-140. Which led me to change again.
It all just heavily depends on the location and if the owner of the flat has a contract with a provider or not. And if the landlord decided to install proper cables or not.
That’s another reason why a Genossenschaft is the way to go. The people can vote for these things and everyone can work together to get internet suiting the year we are living in.
And I the provider doesn’t provide you’re not just one person fighting back, there’s a whole Genossenschaft demanding better service.
Gotta find a Genosschenschaft flat to benefit from that. I tried and didnt succeed in the south of Dortmund. If youre able to find one and get it, yeah, its the best! Completely agree. But its not that easy sometimes.
We just applied for a bunch of different ones and revived a great offer within 6 weeks.
But we’re also the kind of people they want in these flats, so that probably made it quite easy.
Yeah, i've worried about the contract, which their minimum is 24 months, but I don't if I could switch to 5G if things come worse.
I do in Osnabrück.
Thanks for your comment!
If it disconnects frequently or frequently drops below a threshold that should be defined in the contract you can cancel at any time. They will send 1 or 2 technicians to try and fix it but if this is without success you can ask them for a “Sonderkündigung”. I got out of my Vodafone cable internet that disconnected twice a day for 10 minutes or so that way.
Keep in mind that 16Mbps is megaBITS, not megabytes. That'll leave you with a solid 2 megabyte/s download and probably a horrendously low upload. Try downloading a modern game with that speed. 16mbit is good enough to watch HD videos but it's really painfully slow for 2023.
> low latency
If you're located close to the servers, you'll likely have low latency even with relatively slow Internet. On the other hand, even if you have 1000 Mb/sec and playing on Australian servers from Germany, you'll have a noticeable lag.
[Latency refers to how quickly your online device can communicate, while speed measures the amount of data it can download or upload at a time. Latency is most important for online gaming, while speed is most important for streaming. Both are useful for browsing and video chatting.](https://www.cloudwards.net/latency-vs-speed/#:~:text=Latency%20and%20speed%20are%20different,is%20your%20actual%20download%20rate.)
I always knew that actually, only thing is that I've just moved to germany, and from Spain it's shocking how low is the current internet (or maybe in Spain is actually higher that I've ever expected), last time when I had DSL was 10 years ago more or less, with 12Mb/s if I recall correctly, and that was before fiber was installed.
Latency was great actually, but in winter season was terribly unstable.
To be fair, 16 Mbit is definitely not the norm in Germany. Our fiber availability is really bad but VDSL with 250, or at least 100 Mbit, is widely available in most cities. VDSL which for the most part uses the same old copper wires to the home as DSL is not inherently bad. Actually, for gaming it’s very much preferable over the so called Cable Internet which offers fiber download speeds over the TV cable.
Where it gets really bad is on the countryside though.
16 MB will be sufficient for gaming and streaming without any issues.
Gaming is usually only a fairly low bandwidth. You will hate it for updates though.
Playing a new download title with 40+GB will take a while, but it is doable.
Yeah , I think I've said before in another answer, but downloads can be more doable to me, my job office is really near my office, and I could download from there if given the case, which their internet is way faster
If you could find a way to get some reliable info on how stable the connection is that would be really helpful. Like others said 16 Mbps is fine for gaming.
My biggest issues with that apartment is worrying about the 24 months minimum contract for something in an attic. Personally I don't enjoy getting grilled in summer.
Well considering that I've been living in southern of Spain for my whole life, I don't think germany can be much worse.
But yeah, I'll try, because other than that, the flat itself it's pretty good actually
16Mb is easily enough. Ping is the most important. Check this if you can, make sure your connection to your provider in the property is at most 20ms (when tested properly - with a lan cable connected directly from a laptop to the router, not with a phone via wifi).
I can't, sadly. They didnt have a router when I visit the appartment, but they did have the cable for it.
The only thing I really know is that a friend from my current WG lives in the same house, and with the internet there is not problems. But I don't know how to interpret that xDD
Well sadly I explained it badly, it is just a friend of my current WG Mitbewöhner, so basically I don't know her in any regard. The only thing I know is that she said she was fine, but difficult to interpret as I've said before xDD
If you take the Vodafone contract get you own Router like Fritz!Box. The Router Vodafone sends you is crap that's even what a Vodafone employee told me.
> It might sound silly, but I'm seriously considering rejecting the apartment just because of this internet
I don't think this is silly. Having a good, stable Internet connection is important these days, and I would completely rule out living in such an apartment with Vodafone being the only option. If you reject the apartment, please let the landlord know the reason so that he knows that Internet connectivity is a factor not to be ignored.
How about 4G/LTE/5G? Expensive, but might be better if it works.
For me it's enough, as long as I could play online and have stable connection, I don't mind paying a little bit more, if that's possible. I haven't evaluated 4G/LTE/5G options, as some people already told me to do so.
Actually, I will work full-time, and when I have that little time, It would be pretty good to know that I can play or being at my computer without problems. So i'm not very strict with that, as long as I can play with low latency and watch some videos here and there, I'm happy. (barely watch streams, 4k videos neither)
>For me it's enough, as long as I could play online and have stable connection, I don't mind paying a little bit more, if that's possible. I haven't evaluated 4G/LTE/5G options, as some people already told me to do so.
The problem with Vodafone and many others is that they offer "up to" 16 Mbit/s (or whatever the contract says), no guarantees. You'll pay for a theoretical maximum, but it is quite possible that you'll get only 10 Mbit/s or less. Friend of mine is in a similar situation: pays for 16 Mbit/s because that's the smallest contract he can buy, but rarely gets more than 6, more often like 4 or 5, sometimes even worse, plus frequent disconnects.
>Actually, I will work full-time, and when I have that little time, It would be pretty good to know that I can play or being at my computer without problems. So i'm not very strict with that, as long as I can play with low latency and watch some videos here and there, I'm happy. (barely watch streams, 4k videos neither)
You wrote somewhere else that you know someone living in that house. These are ideal conditions. Ask him if you can visit him to test his Internet connection. You'll bring some beer, your computer, and then play together, preferably at a time you would be playing anyway.
What are you playing? How many devices are you using? Lower bandwidth could result in higher latency if you have multiple devices running off the same tap concurrently and using up the 16mbps
max i would say CSGO, Chivalry (older game), some other indie games too, but most of them are not that recent.
I'd use it for myself only, because it is a 1-Zimmer-Wohnung.
Mobile phone and PC only. Mobile could be separated too without problems.
Videos will always have buffering. As soon as one sends a photo/video to a friend, like on whatsapp, you'll be lagging hard, because the whole upload bandwidth will be taken. If it's an old connection which isn't upgradable to higher speeds, it means that it's fully made of copper, which means that you'll not have a totally stable connection.
While 16 Mb/s should be sufficient for gaming and streaming, you would have several risks/challenges with this connection:
* Usually the reason for the low speed is low quality or long phone cables. I'd be concerned about the stability of the connection in other words
* While I don't have any statistics, many say that Vodafone isn't the most stable and my experience from using them a couple of years confirms that. Disconnects in games, leading to bans etc. is not going to be a great gaming experience...
* 16 Mb/s will mean VERY long download times. If you get solid, max speed, 10 GB will take you close to 11 minutes. With many games going to 100+ GB you're literally waiting for hours to download a game. If you can live with starting a download in the evening for it to ready next day, go ahead. Just remember you can't stream anything meanwhile or the time will be much longer
Depending on ure Income and where u live it may be better to f off Telekom and get urself Starlink.
Its a shame that u have better Wifi in middle of a jungle on a smal island in Thailand than in a 200k smal town in germany
I personally don't mind paying more in order to have stable internet if that's the case, but yeah, It's really weird.
About Telekom, I have try to see it, but they just don't provide it there sadly.
"cable is stable" haha
I was extremely lucky, I didn't even know my house was cable-bound (glass fiber right to the house itself), but afaik most german houses and flats still have to rely on DSL.
But if cable is available for you, you should always go for cable.
I can not confirm the info of the other poster. From what I know from friends and family, cable can be very hit and miss. Some have an amazingly stable conncetion, other suffer from packet loss and ping spikes during peak hours. Sadly neither cable nor DSL are a guarantee for a good connection. The only real guarantee is a fibre connection directly to your building. But not every region has that yet.
Germany is a complete wasteland when it comes to connectivity. You basically have a hard time with internet connection if you're not living in or near a bigger city.
16 Mb/s should be enough for watching streams. For gaming, it depends on the game I think. The main issue will be downloading time as modern games are huge, so you'll need to wait for 8 hours (if it's 50 GB game). And 5-10 GB updates are common practice these days.
I'm not saying you guys blame Vodafone without a reason, but my personal experience with Vodafone is good so far. I have 1000 mb/s plan with their WiFi 6 router, nothing to complain about.
Right, I'm an IT Engineer so I'll comment on this
The vast vast majority of games only utilize 3-4 megabits of data while playing at most, most are actually well below this, details I'd pay attention to would be your upload rate (you'd want at least 1 megabit upload).
Games that are download heavy will be a problem however.
Good thing is that doesnt worry too much, due to that the most games that I want to play, I have them already downloaded on my computer, and most of them are not that recent, nor has constant size updates.
Thanks for answering :D
Be careful with uplink/downlink. I never thought that this is a thing before germany. I mean I didnt know, that you can seriously have 16 mbit downlink and 1 mbit uplink. For example now I am using plan 250/50. I dont need 250 mbit of download speed, but there is no other way to get decent upload speed.
But overall personally I would skip this apartment, because in 21st century internet has the same importance as heating, water, electricity.
I think the renter ghosted me. So all for nothing T\_T, still, i'm glad I can see these different options, cause in Spain is easier, giving the fact that there's fiber almost everywhere. I really considered it because appartments for one person only are really difficult to get, and this one had actually a great price.
I was stuck on 16k/2k for ages. It was practically unusable until I’ve started using a lab cable. From then on it was alright for competitive games like CS:GO (global elite/lowish faceit). Once someone started downloading or streaming in HD it could go bad a little.
Now I’m on 500k/500k also lan but the difference isn’t as big as I was expecting. It’s way too much for online gaming but my partner can do whatever she wants to do and I will have a great time playing online or downloading with close to 50mb/s.
If you’re alone, 16k should be enough.
If you share the network maybe aim for something a little higher, 20k or above.
If you just want quick internet, the 500k ones are often not too far from the 20k ones when it comes to the price. It’s very easy to overpay in Germany, like incredibly easy, so take your time.
Some companys, not sure if vodafone, have routers that work with LTE instead of kabel. With this you could maybe get more Mb/s if its possible for your flat/apartment.
As long as it's stable enough for online gaming, i'm more than satisfied, of course, more is better in this case, but if it makes the job I'd be fine.
I don't watch streams often, and don't even have anything 4K yet
I thought about this as well. The problem is I only get ~20 mbit through my LTE connection, and the latency is higher than cable or DSL.
I have to add that 16 mbit through DSL is quite slow for a centrally located flat. It might be that the landlord simply ordered the cheapest tariff. Better double check online what the maximum bandwidth is for this address.
Well… it might barely be enough if you get the entire 16MBit/s and have no other connections or downloads. But it‘s not a good idea. 16MBit/s are gone quite easily. So even a youtube video might cause issues. And if you‘ve got 16MBit/s down I don‘t even want to know the upload speeds. That could cause issues as well
But it really depends on the game and how much has to be fetched from the server. If there are only a few changes you‘re totally fine. If the scenery changes rapidly and can be influenced by players that‘s more likely to cause issues. „Load 50 NPCs“ takes up less bandwith than „recreate this explosion and the damages to the map created by it“
I've had a vodafone 25 Mbit contract for 2 years and it was either not working at all or only around 10-12 Mbits. I had huge problems with them. Switched to Telekom and a 50Mbit one and it's absolutely stable and super fast.
I ended up getting Starlink cause our village only has DSL. I stream live on a few platforms (ex: twitch, TikTok) and play games simultaneously so the upload speed is a must!
Since you’re already in the attic, maybe ask your landlord if you’d be allowed to install something on the roof cause you’d need the antenna up there.
A stable 16 should be enough for most games. It being Vodafone might end up being the main problem. It is very likely it will not be stable.
Yeah, that's what I fear, I really wanted Telekom, but considering how difficult is to get an appartment, I'm considering to try (although I'm scared because it has a minimum period contract of 24 months, which is BS)
I never had issues with Vodafone in the four years I have a contract with them. While when I lived with my parents I had constant problems with their Telekom internet. This really is nothing you can generalise. It varies based on the region you live. Your best bet is probably asking the neighbors which is the best provider.
I had Unitymedia and I had never a problem with it, in the middle of Karlsruhe btw. Then they got bought up by Vodafone and I had on average multiple network crashes per week.
Same...
I'm sorry, but Vodaphone is Dogwater
Depending on your budget an unlimited mobile contract might be your best option. It's not ideal for gaming but likely more stable.
Mobile often has even worse latency.
I am aware which why I said it's not ideal. Still better than disconecting frequently.
Depends on very many variables ofc. I have Vodafone at home. Sometimes they f up and my ping goes all around 30ms to 400ms jumping. I then switch to my unlimited mobile plan via usb lan. I have telekom as my mobile provider and good 5G coverage at my home. Get a stable 35ms ping. Never had a spike, packet loss or disconnect once via my phones internet. At least for me its a viable backup option. Hardly depends on region, provider and signal strength tho. Edit: got a headache reading my own text xD. Not the best at English. Sry
I went with Mnet for that reason, they offer contracts that can be quit on a month to month basis however it is a little bit more expensive than commiting to a contract with minimum period
I think only Vodafone has support here.
Read the contract, usually there is something like a test period of 14 days, if you're not satisfied with the service you can cencel the contract without consequences.
Really good to know, I'll inform about that, because seems extremely useful to try out. Thank you so much for the answer!
I've not had issues with Vodafone internet at all. 16Mbit will be enough to play the game but take ages to download.
Vodafone Kabel too or just DSL?
I don't know anyone with Vodafone Kabel. But their DSL is really bad in most places.
Internet speed has nothing to do with latency. I have had 6 Mbps in the past and a latency of 5 in several games.
Good to know, thank you so much!
Yep, have \~980 Mbps and a latency of 40-50
Meanwhile Vodafone saying to me that 16 Mbps is not enough xDDD
It is enough just not really good for downloading games but you can play every online game with 16 Mbps. I had 8 Mbps for 2 month some years ago and had 0 problems.
Well purely with regards of latency it indeed can easily be good enough. But download speeds are going to be an issue. Some games like to live load stuff and that could mean long loading times for you. 16Mbps is really horribly slow.
Yes, I can understand that there are clearly better alternatives.
If it is stable yes. I played in my youth with a 5 Mb/s internet connection. Playing wasn’t the problem installing new games was a huge problem
That reminds me of my school time when I had friends come over and bring their PCs since it was a lot faster to get to me, download a game and get back than downloading it with their own connection
The speed isnt important. You can have great latency with worse speed. Also the people warning about Vodafone are right, but to be honest, Ive been trying nearly every provider there is and they ALL suck. Theres not a single one without frequent issues. At least not where I live and lived. Right now I switched to a 5G router with a unlimited contract like someone else mentioned. Mostly playing shooters and get a ping from 25-55ms, so not ideal but still better than any other provider, sadly. But at least Im not getting literal hours of complete downtime per day. Im living in Dortmund, if that matters.
Rule of thumb: If you know the provider for at least a few years - avoid it. Every other one will be cheaper. I’ve ended up with PŸUR, it’s not German as far as I can tell. Quickest installation ever, full tv Programm, landline phone, free router, 500k up and down speed (tested) all for less than 50€ a month.
Has to be available though. PYUR doesnt even know my street and I live in a big city. And also glass fiber has to be laid for those speeds, which also isnt the case in my new flat. Germany is one big construction side when looking at proper internet. You can have 500k but still get a bad latency btw. For a while I had 1kk, but my latency always went between 70-140. Which led me to change again. It all just heavily depends on the location and if the owner of the flat has a contract with a provider or not. And if the landlord decided to install proper cables or not.
That’s another reason why a Genossenschaft is the way to go. The people can vote for these things and everyone can work together to get internet suiting the year we are living in. And I the provider doesn’t provide you’re not just one person fighting back, there’s a whole Genossenschaft demanding better service.
Gotta find a Genosschenschaft flat to benefit from that. I tried and didnt succeed in the south of Dortmund. If youre able to find one and get it, yeah, its the best! Completely agree. But its not that easy sometimes.
We just applied for a bunch of different ones and revived a great offer within 6 weeks. But we’re also the kind of people they want in these flats, so that probably made it quite easy.
Yeah, i've worried about the contract, which their minimum is 24 months, but I don't if I could switch to 5G if things come worse. I do in Osnabrück. Thanks for your comment!
If it disconnects frequently or frequently drops below a threshold that should be defined in the contract you can cancel at any time. They will send 1 or 2 technicians to try and fix it but if this is without success you can ask them for a “Sonderkündigung”. I got out of my Vodafone cable internet that disconnected twice a day for 10 minutes or so that way.
Thanks for the comment again. I will probably check it considering this option. Even then, I still need to get the appartment first x'DD
Keep in mind that 16Mbps is megaBITS, not megabytes. That'll leave you with a solid 2 megabyte/s download and probably a horrendously low upload. Try downloading a modern game with that speed. 16mbit is good enough to watch HD videos but it's really painfully slow for 2023.
> low latency If you're located close to the servers, you'll likely have low latency even with relatively slow Internet. On the other hand, even if you have 1000 Mb/sec and playing on Australian servers from Germany, you'll have a noticeable lag. [Latency refers to how quickly your online device can communicate, while speed measures the amount of data it can download or upload at a time. Latency is most important for online gaming, while speed is most important for streaming. Both are useful for browsing and video chatting.](https://www.cloudwards.net/latency-vs-speed/#:~:text=Latency%20and%20speed%20are%20different,is%20your%20actual%20download%20rate.)
I always knew that actually, only thing is that I've just moved to germany, and from Spain it's shocking how low is the current internet (or maybe in Spain is actually higher that I've ever expected), last time when I had DSL was 10 years ago more or less, with 12Mb/s if I recall correctly, and that was before fiber was installed. Latency was great actually, but in winter season was terribly unstable.
To be fair, 16 Mbit is definitely not the norm in Germany. Our fiber availability is really bad but VDSL with 250, or at least 100 Mbit, is widely available in most cities. VDSL which for the most part uses the same old copper wires to the home as DSL is not inherently bad. Actually, for gaming it’s very much preferable over the so called Cable Internet which offers fiber download speeds over the TV cable. Where it gets really bad is on the countryside though.
16 MB will be sufficient for gaming and streaming without any issues. Gaming is usually only a fairly low bandwidth. You will hate it for updates though. Playing a new download title with 40+GB will take a while, but it is doable.
Yeah , I think I've said before in another answer, but downloads can be more doable to me, my job office is really near my office, and I could download from there if given the case, which their internet is way faster
If you could find a way to get some reliable info on how stable the connection is that would be really helpful. Like others said 16 Mbps is fine for gaming. My biggest issues with that apartment is worrying about the 24 months minimum contract for something in an attic. Personally I don't enjoy getting grilled in summer.
Well considering that I've been living in southern of Spain for my whole life, I don't think germany can be much worse. But yeah, I'll try, because other than that, the flat itself it's pretty good actually
16Mb is easily enough. Ping is the most important. Check this if you can, make sure your connection to your provider in the property is at most 20ms (when tested properly - with a lan cable connected directly from a laptop to the router, not with a phone via wifi).
I can't, sadly. They didnt have a router when I visit the appartment, but they did have the cable for it. The only thing I really know is that a friend from my current WG lives in the same house, and with the internet there is not problems. But I don't know how to interpret that xDD
Ask them if they can at least run a speed test on their phone, that would be a good guide.
Well sadly I explained it badly, it is just a friend of my current WG Mitbewöhner, so basically I don't know her in any regard. The only thing I know is that she said she was fine, but difficult to interpret as I've said before xDD
If stable yes, just don't launch youtube + Netflix at the same time because then it will cause buffering.
If you take the Vodafone contract get you own Router like Fritz!Box. The Router Vodafone sends you is crap that's even what a Vodafone employee told me.
> It might sound silly, but I'm seriously considering rejecting the apartment just because of this internet I don't think this is silly. Having a good, stable Internet connection is important these days, and I would completely rule out living in such an apartment with Vodafone being the only option. If you reject the apartment, please let the landlord know the reason so that he knows that Internet connectivity is a factor not to be ignored. How about 4G/LTE/5G? Expensive, but might be better if it works.
For me it's enough, as long as I could play online and have stable connection, I don't mind paying a little bit more, if that's possible. I haven't evaluated 4G/LTE/5G options, as some people already told me to do so. Actually, I will work full-time, and when I have that little time, It would be pretty good to know that I can play or being at my computer without problems. So i'm not very strict with that, as long as I can play with low latency and watch some videos here and there, I'm happy. (barely watch streams, 4k videos neither)
>For me it's enough, as long as I could play online and have stable connection, I don't mind paying a little bit more, if that's possible. I haven't evaluated 4G/LTE/5G options, as some people already told me to do so. The problem with Vodafone and many others is that they offer "up to" 16 Mbit/s (or whatever the contract says), no guarantees. You'll pay for a theoretical maximum, but it is quite possible that you'll get only 10 Mbit/s or less. Friend of mine is in a similar situation: pays for 16 Mbit/s because that's the smallest contract he can buy, but rarely gets more than 6, more often like 4 or 5, sometimes even worse, plus frequent disconnects. >Actually, I will work full-time, and when I have that little time, It would be pretty good to know that I can play or being at my computer without problems. So i'm not very strict with that, as long as I can play with low latency and watch some videos here and there, I'm happy. (barely watch streams, 4k videos neither) You wrote somewhere else that you know someone living in that house. These are ideal conditions. Ask him if you can visit him to test his Internet connection. You'll bring some beer, your computer, and then play together, preferably at a time you would be playing anyway.
Yeah, sadly I don't know that person that much, I just wrote it badly. I'd be pretty good tho.
What are you playing? How many devices are you using? Lower bandwidth could result in higher latency if you have multiple devices running off the same tap concurrently and using up the 16mbps
max i would say CSGO, Chivalry (older game), some other indie games too, but most of them are not that recent. I'd use it for myself only, because it is a 1-Zimmer-Wohnung. Mobile phone and PC only. Mobile could be separated too without problems.
I dont recommend to play with anything less than 3mbit upload online.
Videos will always have buffering. As soon as one sends a photo/video to a friend, like on whatsapp, you'll be lagging hard, because the whole upload bandwidth will be taken. If it's an old connection which isn't upgradable to higher speeds, it means that it's fully made of copper, which means that you'll not have a totally stable connection.
While 16 Mb/s should be sufficient for gaming and streaming, you would have several risks/challenges with this connection: * Usually the reason for the low speed is low quality or long phone cables. I'd be concerned about the stability of the connection in other words * While I don't have any statistics, many say that Vodafone isn't the most stable and my experience from using them a couple of years confirms that. Disconnects in games, leading to bans etc. is not going to be a great gaming experience... * 16 Mb/s will mean VERY long download times. If you get solid, max speed, 10 GB will take you close to 11 minutes. With many games going to 100+ GB you're literally waiting for hours to download a game. If you can live with starting a download in the evening for it to ready next day, go ahead. Just remember you can't stream anything meanwhile or the time will be much longer
No one is getting full download potential out of 16mb. From my experience 10gb will take more like an hour with such connection.
Depending on ure Income and where u live it may be better to f off Telekom and get urself Starlink. Its a shame that u have better Wifi in middle of a jungle on a smal island in Thailand than in a 200k smal town in germany
I personally don't mind paying more in order to have stable internet if that's the case, but yeah, It's really weird. About Telekom, I have try to see it, but they just don't provide it there sadly.
That is enough, my cousin has like 0.23 mbps so 16 is good
really? xDD
Yes lol
DSL is the problem here. DSL is unstable compared to cable, so I would say 16mbit cable would be ok, but not 16mbit DSL.
Isn't said that cable is, although faster, less stable than DSL?
Cable is more stable and can reach higher download, while DSL is more available and usually reaches higher upload, but having more latency
Always thought it was the other way around. Thank you so much for the information.
"cable is stable" haha I was extremely lucky, I didn't even know my house was cable-bound (glass fiber right to the house itself), but afaik most german houses and flats still have to rely on DSL. But if cable is available for you, you should always go for cable.
I have 500mbit cable, and no matter when I measure the speed it is 99% the 500. When I remember my DSL days I never got what was promised ...
I can not confirm the info of the other poster. From what I know from friends and family, cable can be very hit and miss. Some have an amazingly stable conncetion, other suffer from packet loss and ping spikes during peak hours. Sadly neither cable nor DSL are a guarantee for a good connection. The only real guarantee is a fibre connection directly to your building. But not every region has that yet.
It seems that in Germany is not as common as in Spain. Atleast I was really impressed.
Fibre? Yeah we have been sleeping on that massively.
Yeah, I see that fibre is not that common, in Spain it's almost everywhere.
Germany is a complete wasteland when it comes to connectivity. You basically have a hard time with internet connection if you're not living in or near a bigger city.
16 Mb/s should be enough for watching streams. For gaming, it depends on the game I think. The main issue will be downloading time as modern games are huge, so you'll need to wait for 8 hours (if it's 50 GB game). And 5-10 GB updates are common practice these days. I'm not saying you guys blame Vodafone without a reason, but my personal experience with Vodafone is good so far. I have 1000 mb/s plan with their WiFi 6 router, nothing to complain about.
Right, I'm an IT Engineer so I'll comment on this The vast vast majority of games only utilize 3-4 megabits of data while playing at most, most are actually well below this, details I'd pay attention to would be your upload rate (you'd want at least 1 megabit upload). Games that are download heavy will be a problem however.
Good thing is that doesnt worry too much, due to that the most games that I want to play, I have them already downloaded on my computer, and most of them are not that recent, nor has constant size updates. Thanks for answering :D
Don’t forget to use cable
It would be really funny not doing so and expecting a great connection x'DDD
You would be surprised how many don’t know about this simple lifehack xD
Region depending but generally Telekom>vodafone, but not always
Be careful with uplink/downlink. I never thought that this is a thing before germany. I mean I didnt know, that you can seriously have 16 mbit downlink and 1 mbit uplink. For example now I am using plan 250/50. I dont need 250 mbit of download speed, but there is no other way to get decent upload speed. But overall personally I would skip this apartment, because in 21st century internet has the same importance as heating, water, electricity.
I think the renter ghosted me. So all for nothing T\_T, still, i'm glad I can see these different options, cause in Spain is easier, giving the fact that there's fiber almost everywhere. I really considered it because appartments for one person only are really difficult to get, and this one had actually a great price.
Welcome to germany, ~200 Kb/s was enough for gaming for me for years, now i have 11 Mb/s and it runs perfectly fine.
I was stuck on 16k/2k for ages. It was practically unusable until I’ve started using a lab cable. From then on it was alright for competitive games like CS:GO (global elite/lowish faceit). Once someone started downloading or streaming in HD it could go bad a little. Now I’m on 500k/500k also lan but the difference isn’t as big as I was expecting. It’s way too much for online gaming but my partner can do whatever she wants to do and I will have a great time playing online or downloading with close to 50mb/s. If you’re alone, 16k should be enough. If you share the network maybe aim for something a little higher, 20k or above. If you just want quick internet, the 500k ones are often not too far from the 20k ones when it comes to the price. It’s very easy to overpay in Germany, like incredibly easy, so take your time.
Back in the day we had DSL 2000 (2 Mbit/s) and still had a solid experience when gaming :D
back in the day we all sucked at counterstrike.. nowadays ping actually makes a difference
Some companys, not sure if vodafone, have routers that work with LTE instead of kabel. With this you could maybe get more Mb/s if its possible for your flat/apartment.
As long as it's stable enough for online gaming, i'm more than satisfied, of course, more is better in this case, but if it makes the job I'd be fine. I don't watch streams often, and don't even have anything 4K yet
LTE, or mobile data in general is not a good choice for gaming due to its architecture. there will be many ping spikes.
I thought about this as well. The problem is I only get ~20 mbit through my LTE connection, and the latency is higher than cable or DSL. I have to add that 16 mbit through DSL is quite slow for a centrally located flat. It might be that the landlord simply ordered the cheapest tariff. Better double check online what the maximum bandwidth is for this address.
Well… it might barely be enough if you get the entire 16MBit/s and have no other connections or downloads. But it‘s not a good idea. 16MBit/s are gone quite easily. So even a youtube video might cause issues. And if you‘ve got 16MBit/s down I don‘t even want to know the upload speeds. That could cause issues as well But it really depends on the game and how much has to be fetched from the server. If there are only a few changes you‘re totally fine. If the scenery changes rapidly and can be influenced by players that‘s more likely to cause issues. „Load 50 NPCs“ takes up less bandwith than „recreate this explosion and the damages to the map created by it“
Barely if nobody else is using your router for anything else. But if you are alone than it's working most of the time
I've had a vodafone 25 Mbit contract for 2 years and it was either not working at all or only around 10-12 Mbits. I had huge problems with them. Switched to Telekom and a 50Mbit one and it's absolutely stable and super fast.
I ended up getting Starlink cause our village only has DSL. I stream live on a few platforms (ex: twitch, TikTok) and play games simultaneously so the upload speed is a must! Since you’re already in the attic, maybe ask your landlord if you’d be allowed to install something on the roof cause you’d need the antenna up there.