Quote from WinstonTJ:
Most datacenters sell bandwidth in increments of 100mbits. If you can, I'd suggest you get a 100mbit burst (not symetrical) because its cheaper. You will probably NEVER break 50mbit but if you are paying for 50 its still going to be a 100mbit line just throttled back to 50 at the switch.
I pull 3k symbols realtime and have several strategies running as well as bloomberg terminals and some bloomberg TV over internet. I have never pulled over 45mbit and my highest sustained (longer than 5min) rate is around 23-25mbits across 8-10 machines, execution + internet + chats + data recording, etc.
I would reccomend against something like a FiOs or Time Warner Cable business class. Its like $400/month for a 50mbit line and that's not symetrical its burst, the sustained rates over those lines are around 15mbit and the reliability is less than ideal.