@Beth Gallagher How decent is decent? Much over a meg/sec is not our speed. However, certain types of send/receive require differing speeds; why, I don't know. In Missouri, on dial-up, we had a 28K Modem. It received some stuff at around 5K, never anywhere near 28K. Email was awful, images very time-consuming, videos all but impossible. Uploading to elsewhere was the slowest; uploading an image to an image processing service would take long enough to do one image that I could go prepare a cup of coffee, come back, and it was not done yet. Needless to say, not having 30 hours a day to dedicate to the internet, we were only mildly involved with it there. Hughes-Net became available there towards the end of our stay, promising but not guaranteeing 1meg, but over a hundred bucks a month, we hadn't the dough. Now, we have DSL on a land-line sharing with our telephone. I am guessing it downloads at perhaps 2-3 megs, but have forgotten how to check it. Cable must be available, there are about 10 coax. lines coming in under our house. My wife just bought a new T-V which is capable of using our DSL to receive certain TV channels, but not many. I am still in the learning process........ Frank
Maine is not known for high-speed Internet, but I get from 10-15 Mbps download speed, and less than 1 Mbps upload, sometimes a little higher, other times lower. The download is what's important for streaming. I don't have any trouble with Netflix, but I sometimes get annoying buffering with Amazon Prime, and I suspended my Hulu account because I couldn't even get it to load. Tech support for Hulu told me I needed at least a 3 Mbps download speed for Hulu, since it's more demanding on resources than Netflix. Given that my download speed was around 12 Mbps at the time, that didn't help me, so I suspended that account. I wasn't crazy about Hulu anyhow. I have since had our ISP out here, and he said there were some problems that needed to be fixed outside, and that he put an order in for that, but I haven't bothered to try Hulu since.
Let me google that for you, Frank. "You need a minimum download speed of 3 Megabits per second to watch a single video stream in clear, standard definition. The best Internet speed for HD streaming is 5Mbps, and if you go all the way up to 4K streaming, or ultra HD, your bandwidth should start at 25Mbps." So the answer is... "it depends."
@Beth Gallagher So, I gather you have an understanding of some of these technical aspects. I was trained in electronics when solid-state was in it's infancy, and therefore know the theory, but not today's "ins and outs'. AFAIK, DSL cannot provide 25Mbps. Unless it has been improved upon over the years, DSL originated ~ 25 years ago and is thus kinda obsolete. DSL is "Digital Synchronous Logic", no matter what other names may be heard, and consists of superimposing a digital data stream on a land-line carrier made for voice transmission. DSL depends on "copper", that is, it can only work over wires, until at the "exchange", where it is re-routed through to microwave or glass fiber, or both. At least, that's how my nephew described it to me in the '90s. He was an Engineer for Southwestern Bell Telephone, later SBC. (bold) Why would one view more than a single video stream at once: several T-V sets? I know it's probably a dumb question! Frank
Traditionally, DSL was, and often still is, delivered via existing telephone landlines. However, DSL providers are improving on the copper wires used to transmit data. Perhaps it might be considered a bit of a hybrid, but I have fiber optic coming to my house, yet my connection is considered by the provider to be a DSL line. As a consequence, I get from 10-15 Mbps, whereas the old DSL lines wouldn't exceed 6 Mbps. A pure fiber optic connection, on the other hand, is pretty much instant - at speeds up to 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps). My understanding, if I have accurately interpreted what my ISP tech told me, is that the traditional transmission lines, running from pole to pole, were able to transmit data at speeds much faster than it could be delivered, the weaknesses being in some of the connections, and in the copper lines running from the pole to the house. Years ago, my download speeds were much lower, but they replaced the wire from the connection to my house with fiber optic and that helped a lot. I don't know if the fact that we don't use a landline for telephone access made a difference. The last time he was here, a week or so ago, he found some weak areas in some of the connections along the way. That is what he had put in a work order for. So, I think that DSL connections have improved from what they were providing when they simply transmitted them through your landline, but not nearly to what can be gained through a pure fiber optic line.
@Frank Sanoica Actually, telcom and networks were never my strong suit, so I'm not the one to ask for technical details. Here's some info on DSL versus fiber optics... https://www.attinternetservice.com/resources/fiber-vs-dsl/ And yes, viewing multiple video screens would come into play if you had several TVs, computers, etc. using the same network connection and streaming. (There's no such thing as a dumb question. )
Netflix does need and Update - I think, Plus they keep showing some things as just released when it has been on there for months. Netflix need to hurry up and get season seven of Father Brown!! I use Hulu off and on. What is irritating,is getting set to watch something just to find out you have to download that app and pay a another fee. I miss Kodi , but was so complicated , for me at least.