> But are gigabit speeds really necessary? For me, a 300 Mbps connection is way more than enough for a four-person family.

I'm certain that one could make a sound argument that 300 Mbps is not necessary for that four-person family, and they could make do with a much slower connection. Back in the day, folks would be asking if it's necessary for your Internet connection to be always on. After all, it's no hassle at all to plug the modem into the house phone line and unplug it when you're done!

For me, switching from a 1400/40mbps cable connection to a symmetric-but-variable 300-1000mbps Ethernet connection meant that I was doing the same sorts of things, but often spending much less time waiting for them to complete. Related to that, it also made "content creation"-esque things [0] much, much easier.

[0] Which I'm declaring is a category that includes uploading and downloading huge files while working from home as a programmer/"DevOps" guy.