topic Fiber vs Cable Internet in Arlo Ultra 2

Fiber vs Cable Internet

LordBracht — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 13:42:05 GMT

Not sure if this is the right location to post this, but we now have fiber internet available in our area and was wondering if anyone made the switch from cable internet to fiber and was there any performance improvements with the switch?

Re: Fiber vs Cable Internet

StephenB — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 21:01:52 GMT

@LordBracht wrote:

and was wondering if anyone made the switch from cable internet to fiber and was there any performance improvements with the switch?

I made the switch years ago now. Upload speeds are much faster - typical cable upload speeds are < 35 mbps, my fiber ISP gives me symmetric upload and download (~900 mpbs with my current service). Whether that matters to you depends on how you use the internet.

As far as Arlo services go, upload can be a bottleneck - each 2K camera needs 2 mbps upload when it is streaming. Still, 35 mbps should be enough for most Arlo customers.

Re: Fiber vs Cable Internet

jguerdat — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 12:20:08 GMT

I'm still on cable Internet but now at 1Gbps and saw no improvement in Arlo overall performance. That's expected since the Internet usage of Arlo is rather limited and is only a real issue when the speeds are VERY slow. Unless you had rather poor Internet speeds before, I wouldn't expect any improvement (although new hardware in the network may provide some such improvement).

Re: Fiber vs Cable Internet

StephenB — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 12:42:48 GMT

@jguerdat wrote:

I'm still on cable Internet but now at 1Gbps

I believe that is your download speed. What is your upload speed? That is more important for Arlo performance.

@jguerdat wrote:

I'm still on cable Internet but now at 1Gbps and saw no improvement in Arlo overall performance. That's expected since the Internet usage of Arlo is rather limited and is only a real issue when the speeds are VERY slow.

It depends on the number of cameras that trigger simultaneously (plus whatever upload bandwidth you are using for other stuff).

8 Ultras recording simultaneously ( obviously two or more bases) can congest a 20-25 mbps upload link - which is a typical limit for cable modem internet service.

Re: Fiber vs Cable Internet

jguerdat — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 13:35:18 GMT

Spectrum speeds are now symmetric so 1Gbps down is also the upload speed. In any event, even if not symmetric, the faster download speed is (almost) always combined with some sort of faster upload. My earlier version of the gigabit service provided 40Mbps up speeds, still more than sufficient.

As for 8 Ultras simultaneously recording, that would require 2 hubs which is still a semi-unusual situation. I do agree that many ISP connections are slower both up and down so that would be a point of contention but the OP was asking about a fiber connection which isn't known to have the slower speeds. In addition, it was asked if performance would increase and the answer would thus be no.