25Mbps vs 4 Mbps

Mon Nov 19 15:02:25 UTC 2012

Hi,

The service provider(s) pipe that takes all web traffic from my laptop to
the central servers (assume youtube) remain same whether i take a 4Mbps or
a 25Mbps connection from my service provider. This means that the internet
connection that i take from my service provider only affects the last mile
-- from my home network to my service providers first access router. Given
this, would one really see a 6 times improvement in a 25Mbps connection
over a 4Mbps connection?

I assume that the service providers rate limit the traffic much
more aggressively in a 4Mbps connection. But this would only matter if the
traffic from my youtube server is greater than 4Mbps, which i suspect would
be the case.

The question then is that how does going for a higher BW connection from
the service provider help?

Glen