How fast should your Internet connection be?

Today, with the development of technology, the speed of network systems such as fiber and 5G can easily reach gigabit per second.What a great information for those who are always interested in the download speed of the network.But in fact, how much bandwidth do we really need?Even the countries with the best Internet connectivity in the world, their networks are only stable at 15 to 50 Mbps and for the daily needs of most common users, this number basically enough.Still knowing people's natural desire is always "more than better" and that is the driving force of development, but do we really need a network with download speeds up to hundred megabits per second?

Calculate Internet speed

First of all, the important thing is that we need to understand the basics of the following terms:

Mbps (Mb / s)

This is one of the most misunderstood acronyms.Mbps refers to megabits per second (not the megabyte as many people think).A megabit cannot be equal to one megabyte.Theoretically one byte is equal to 8 bits, so if you are downloading one MB (megabyte) of files at one Mbps (megabits per second), it means this file will take eight seconds to download.The same is Gbps (one gigabit per second), in which one gigabit equals one eighth of a gigabyte.

Bandwidth

Imagine a highway.The bandwidth is the width of the highway, the number of cars that can 'fit' into the road at the same time will be equivalent to the maximum number of megabits you can download every second.In short, you don't buy Internet speeds from service providers, you buy bandwidth.

Flux

Based on the above example, it is understandable that throughput is the number of vehicles actually circulating on the highway.The throughput cannot be greater than the bandwidth you have available.

Speed

Finally, "speed" is a quite subjective combination of many different factors.In other words to determine the actual speed at which you receive the data, many different factors need to be taken into account.Trying to run too much data through a limited bandwidth can also affect speed.Other factors also include distance, DNS server, hardware .

How do different activities use bandwidth?

When there are too many vehicles entering a route, the route will still be congested, and for Internet bandwidth, the problem is the same.If you want everything you require to appear on the screen, you'll need to make sure that your network has the necessary bandwidth to meet the data load capacity.

As a general rule for 2018, any bandwidth with speeds below 2 or 3 Mbps can feel slow if you perform heavier tasks than browsing the web, and any bandwidth with speed over fifty Mbps will not be significantly faster unless only a few people and some devices in the system are online at the same time.

Play online video : 3-25 Mb / sec

This is probably the largest bandwidth that people use regularly.You can refer to the following table, this data is taken from Netflix and YouTube.

Video type

Bandwidth

YouTube (low quality - 360p)

0.7

YouTube (720p)

2.5

Netflix (standard quality - 480p)

Netflix (HD quality - 1080p)

Netflix (ultra HD quality / 4K - 3840p / 4096p)

0.5 Mbps can help you comfortably watch most YouTube videos and 25 Mbps can help you download good 4K videos, as long as you do not perform any other tasks besides watch video.In general, about 5 Mbps is enough to give you a good video viewing experience, with no jerks, waiting for downloads.

Play online game: 1-6 Mb / s

A relatively common misconception is that multi-player online games often use a lot of bandwidth.However, the reality is that these games do not constantly send video back and forth, but only a little bit of data represents changes in the game (for example, when the player transitions for example).Everything else (like houses, cars) you see in the game is stored locally.Of course this depends on the game, but generally you won't need to download or upload multiple megabits for each game change.You should probably pay more attention to ping, because latency is the real problem with online games.

Video call: 0.3 - 8 Mb / sec

If you work from home or use the video chat feature, you will probably use up some bandwidth, however, this number may not be as much as you think.You can have a low-quality Skype chat at 0.3 Mb / s and great at 1.5 Mbps.However, the more people participating in the call, the more download bandwidth you need to receive all the data from them.

Regular web browsing, social networking and email usage: 1-3 Mb / s

Unless you have to browse the web with heavy images or files, just 1 - 3 Mbps will provide you with almost any HTML, text and image content with great speed.

Number of users and devices

A person who has a habit of streaming video online and two or three other devices is connected, maybe the bandwidth is still enough.However, as more people connect to the system, you will feel a significant decrease in speed, especially if all are online for a while or if they often perform heavy tasks.In addition, smart home devices and Internet-connected devices can also take up a lot of background data.

summary

From a practical point of view, a connection of about 30 Mbps is relatively stable with the needs of the common user family.Even if the family does not use up 30 Mbps, it is not necessarily a waste.This speed can help your Internet to run well during congestion and during peak periods, in addition to being useful for times when you need to download large packets.

How fast should your Internet connection be? Picture 9

Of course, if conditions permit, why not equip yourself with a super fast Internet connection, you will get the best Internet experience.If conditions do not allow, you can refer to the information above to optimize your Internet bandwidth usage.

See more:

Internet acceleration 20% faster in Windows
Speed up Internet connection on Windows 10 computers
Video tutorial - How to check the speed of Internet connection on computers and laptops
Network acceleration on Android with Internet Speed Master

Kareem Winters

Update 26 May 2019

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