Is a 3 Mbps Connection Enough for a Family of 5?

[Web]

OK, here's the deal: I live in a house with 4 other people, and we all have our own laptops, tablets, phones, etc. Our Internet plan is the most basic one our ISP (Comcast) has to offer; 3 Mpbs for roughly $40 a month I think (WAAAYYY overpriced). Anyways, almost all of us are utilizing the Internet one way or another. My Mom uses Facebook and iTunes, my Dad does this thing where he can work on his desktop at his workplace at home on a different computer, My siblings mostly video streaming, and myself who games. Even though we've just recently bought top of the line modems and routers, I still get some pretty nasty lag pretty often and it's at its worst when it seems that everybody is using the Internet. But, at night when I'm the only one online, I get no ping spikes at all (From what I've noticed). I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there is simply not enough bandwidth to go around for all of us (Like passing a near dead joint around a group of 20 people), and the lag spikes I get when playing online are due to heavy periodic usage by other people in my house. I'm pretty sure this is the answer, and the only way to fix this is to upgrade to a faster Internet plan, but I just need some clarification. Thanks :D

P.S. What Comcast Internet plan would you recommend for a family of 5 that uses the Internet like mine?

[Silicon Vampire]

When my stepson is over, we (3 people on 3 computers) saturate double that bandwidth pretty much constantly.

I would recommend you get at least a 10 or 12 mb connection.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Comcast's 25Mb/ps plan is $64.95 a month with no bundle. I have not seen a 3Mb/ps plan for Comcast on their site.

We have a 50Mb/ps plan, though out modem only allows us to get to 28-30Mb/ps (docsis 2.0 modem).

No slowdown unless I am downloading from Steam. My wife and I are the only real users in the house. Father-in-law just watches Netflix, Mother-in-law doesn't even touch the net.

[Legendary old man]

It is the video streaming that is killing you. Streaming is almost as bad as downloading. If you was all just playing games you could have at least 10 people using that connection with no problem. However when peoplestart to surf the net or stream you would have issues. One person streaming will use the entire pipe in your case. If you are streaming HD one stream might use between 5 to 7 Mbps.

[Web]

Thanks for your replies. Our current connection can't support HD streaming without having to wait for a couple minutes for the video to load, and most of the streaming is from YouTube in 360p (Default resolution for us). We have the router and modem to support the fastest Internet Comcast has, but the problem is we also have HD cable with Comcast as well, and my Dad simply doesn't feel like paying extra for Internet, considering how much of a ripoff cable already is.