This tool calculates the Bandwidth or Speed requirements of your Internet connection.
To work from home you need a stable internet connection that is able to keep up with video conferencing.
Video conferencing is a bandwidth intensive application relative to audio VoIP calls for instance.
Enter the number of users in your home for each application (Teams, Zoom, etc.) The tool will give the total Download and Upload bandwidth needed to support a quality experience.
Background
The following table shows the upload and download speeds for popular applications. The numbers correspond to the best possible performance.
| Application | Upload | Download |
|---|---|---|
| Google Meet | 4 Mbps | 4 Mbps |
| Skype | 1.5 Mbps | 8 Mbps |
| Microsoft Teams | 4 Mbps | 4 Mbps |
| Webex | 10 Mbps | 10 Mbps |
| Zoom | 3.8 Mbps | 4 Mbps |
Example Calculation
Assume one Teams user and one Zoom user in your household. A download speed of 8 Mbps and Upload speed of 7.8 Mbps is adequate to support these connections.
For a family of four with two working on Meet and two on Teams, requires 16 Mbps on both upload and download.
So… What Internet Speed Do I Need?
In general, we recommend an internet connection speed that is twice the number provided by the calculator.
This recommendation accounts for the two main scenarios: Wired and Wireless connections.
If you connect using a Wired Ethernet cable, then a connection speed equal to or higher than the calculation above should suffice. The reason we recommend higher is that there are generally other devices in your home that use the Internet connection. For instance, Sonos, Amazon Echo and more.
If you connect using Wireless or Wi-Fi, then your internet connection speed depends on how far away from the Access point your desk is. As your laptop moves further away from the Wi-Fi router, the signal strength (also known as Received Signal Strength Indicator or RSSI) decreases. Use this calculator to calculate the RSSI.
For video conferencing, the RSSI should be greater than -50 dBm. If lower, then you will need to bring your laptop or tablet closer to the Wi-Fi router. In this post, we provide some typical numbers for Internet speed (Mbps) as a function of RSSI (dBm).
References
[1] Zoom bandwidth requirements
[2] Skype Bandwidth requirements
[3] Google Meet Bandwidth requirements