Internet Bandwith for work and remote learning at home?

[HeatherC]

I think I have to make the dreaded call to Spectrum regarding our internet bandwidth. We are a family of five adults. My dh has and will continue to be working from home three days a week on Zoom calls all day. My oldest daughter will most likely be teaching remotely full time from home, my other daughter will be taking six college classes full time remotely and my son and I use the internet for general surfing.

I am trying to figure out what do we need to make this work? Is there a minimum bandwidth we need? Should I look into getting another account and splitting our usage up?

Anyone have any experience with this many people working from home on one account? Any help is appreciated.

I am trying to avoid a disaster when school starts at the end of the month and everyone is on the internet at once.

Thanks!

 

[kdonnel]

20 Mbps down would be more then enough, the problem is generally with the upload. If you have DSL or Cable internet it is asymmetric with a much faster download then upload. You could contact your provider and find out what the upload is for the plan you have. I would shoot for 2 Mbps or greater.

When provisioning internet for a small 10 person office I generally ordered a 10 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up connection.

I am spoiled by my 1 Gbps symmetrical fiber connection. 1 Gbps down, 1 Gbps up.

 

[Communicore1991]

It would be helpful to know what your current plan is and if you are having any issues currently in terms of Internet slowness, lag/delay in video calls that your husband may already be doing on Zoom. Also, if there is slowness, if possible anyone using the Internet for video calls should try to plug in to an Ethernet port rather than relying on Wireless which will always be slower than a wired connection.

 

[HeatherC]

20 Mbps down would be more then enough, the problem is generally with the upload. If you have DSL or Cable internet it is asymmetric with a much faster download then upload. You could contact your provider and find out what the upload is for the plan you have. I would shoot for 2 Mbps or greater.

When provisioning internet for a small 10 person office I generally ordered a 10 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up connection.

I am spoiled by my 1 Gbps symmetrical fiber connection. 1 Gbps down, 1 Gbps up.

Thanks! I have no idea what we currently have so it will help knowing what I should have when I call. I am also resigning myself to the fact that our bill will probably be going way up. Ugggh. (And work and schools aren’t going to help pay it.)

 

[firefly_ris]

Thanks! I have no idea what we currently have so it will help knowing what I should have when I call. I am also resigning myself to the fact that our bill will probably be going way up. Ugggh. (And work and schools aren’t going to help pay it.)

Spectrum speed test site -

https://www.spectrum.com/internet/speed-test
Keep in mind wifi will be slower.

 

[sam_gordon]

My wife and I both work from home at least a couple days of the week. DS will often be gaming online and DD is usally chatting with friends or watching youtube. DW sometimes is also working on her personal laptop simultaneously. We have "Spectrum Internet" which says it's 200mb down. "Ultra lite" is $20 more per month and 400mb down.

We have not had a problem, even when DW & I are on two different zoom calls.

 

[tvguy]

No solid advice, just a few observations. The folks with the "faster" internet package seem to have more outages. Usually brief, but more frequent.
have 20 Mbps and rarely have issues as I am the only one using it, and I am not using WiFi, but computer is hardwired to the router. , One guy has something like 350 Mbps service and everytime his kids get on Netflix, they crash his connection.

I think the eye opening thing for my company (and others) is how many employees didn't have any internet at home. They use the work connection when they were in the building. The most common reason at my place was those employees were renters on month to month rental agreements who did not want to pay $150 install fee, and could not get the fee waived because they could not lock into a year contract because it was likely they would be moving, and there was a chance that provider did not serve the area they move to.

 

[Bella the Ball 360]

Let me say I am not technologically savvy right off the bat. Does bandwidth refer to in laymen's terms the amount of wi-fi you can use at the same time. We have Verizon and during the heat of remote office/school I had no problem at all with 4 people using their computers at the same time? We do have the service that is stepped up my husband just added it not that long ago (5 or 6 months)Currently while there are still four of us some of us using it less because it was is summer. I have been kicked off of Zoom Webinars with huge numbers of people and it says that the "not enough bandwidth to support the connection." Is that me? Of is that the presenter?

 

[GreatLakes]

There are three things that will come into play if you have multiple people doing meetings, calls, or streaming shows:

• Bandwidth
• Latency
• Buffer Size

Bandwidth is just the theoretical amount of simultaneous traffic you can send and receive. You can run speed tests to determine this and easily add bandwidth. You likely have more download speed than upload since standard residential service is asymmetric.

Latency is two fold, one is the latency inside your house which is controlled by whether or not you are plugged into the router or on WiFi, how far away from the router you are, and what material the WiFi has to pass through to get from the router to your computer and back. The other latency is a product of how your ISPs network is built and also how your house connects to it. You have little control over this.

Buffer Size you can control provided 1) you have a router capable of configuring it and 2) you know what the heck you are doing. If you run opensource router firmware like DD-WRT or Tomato you'll have access to it. If not you may have some QoS options you set by MAC or you are out of luck. You can Google "router bufferbloat" but essentially routers by default have large buffers to allow for latent and re-sent TCP/IP packets to be assembled and delivered but real-time communication like gaming, voice, and video need to be delivered as is without reassembly (that is a simplification).

We are 50 down and 10 up with two people working from home and one kid streaming Amazon Prime and have no problems but I also customized my routers (we have multiple for different SSIDs) quite a bit.

 

[HeatherC]

My wife and I both work from home at least a couple days of the week. DS will often be gaming online and DD is usally chatting with friends or watching youtube. DW sometimes is also working on her personal laptop simultaneously. We have "Spectrum Internet" which says it's 200mb down. "Ultra lite" is $20 more per month and 400mb down.

We have not had a problem, even when DW & I are on two different zoom calls.

Thanks so much! Good to know this.

 

[HeatherC]

Let me say I am not technologically savvy right off the bat. Does bandwidth refer to in laymen's terms the amount of wi-fi you can use at the same time. We have Verizon and during the heat of remote office/school I had no problem at all with 4 people using their computers at the same time? We do have the service that is stepped up my husband just added it not that long ago (5 or 6 months)Currently while there are still four of us some of us using it less because it was is summer. I have been kicked off of Zoom Webinars with huge numbers of people and it says that the "not enough bandwidth to support the connection." Is that me? Of is that the presenter?

I wish I could help you but I am clueless about this stuff. Hence, the reason for my post. Hopefully, someone can answer this for you.

 

[NotUrsula]

I would say that you have 2 issues that may complicate your situation. One is that you have someone actually teaching from home, which will probably increase your upload traffic somewhat. The second is that video streaming eats bandwidth, so anytime you have multiple live videoconferencing sessions happening, you put a lot more temporary strain on the system.

As was pointed out above, you should have anyone who can use a hardwired ethernet connection do so; it helps immensely to keep traffic flowing more smoothly. Invest in some good-quality long cables.

As far as Zoom is concerned, IME calls start to get glitchy for some people when you get more than about 20 people using video on a single call. On large group calls, it is best to have anyone who is not actively speaking turn the video off.

 

[sam_gordon]

No solid advice, just a few observations. The folks with the "faster" internet package seem to have more outages. Usually brief, but more frequent.
have 20 Mbps and rarely have issues as I am the only one using it, and I am not using WiFi, but computer is hardwired to the router. , One guy has something like 350 Mbps service and everytime his kids get on Netflix, they crash his connection.

20Mbps is plenty for a single user (unless you're a hard core gamer). The guy with the 350Mbps service probably has issues with his Wifi and it's his internal network that's crashing. Or he has a bad modem. 350Mbps is PLENTY for probably dozens of people. There's something else going on there.

The service that you pay for is not what you'd get. Expect probably about 50%. We have 200Mbps service, but my laptop (wifi) and my desktop (hardwired) still only clock in at 100Mbps.

 

[mrs. magoo]

We have GreenLight and during the height of the stay at home orders we had 6 people on zoom calls at the same time. I was teaching, 3 kids on zoom classes and my husband and son in zoom meetings. We have 500 Mbps Download & 50 Mbps Upload. There were times when things got a bit dicey but we were able to make it work.

 

[sam_gordon]

We have GreenLight and during the height of the stay at home orders we had 6 people on zoom calls at the same time. I was teaching, 3 kids on zoom classes and my husband and son in zoom meetings. We have 500 Mbps Download & 50 Mbps Upload. There were times when things got a bit dicey but we were able to make it work.

Were you all on wifi? Depending on the wifi (and router), that can be limiting your bandwidth.

 

[mrs. magoo]

We were all on wifi but I was pretty impressed that we did not have any real problems. Most of the problems were my students using the crappy mifis that they gave the kids. Those things were a nightmare.

 

[kdonnel]

The service that you pay for is not what you'd get. Expect probably about 50%. We have 200Mbps service, but my laptop (wifi) and my desktop (hardwired) still only clock in at 100Mbps.

A properly configured network should get much more then 50% of rated speed when plugged into an ethernet jack. I have 1 Gbps service and speed tests generally show 980 Mbps in both directions when plugged in. The missing 20 Mbps is the overhead associated with IP traffic. Some ISPs will even over provision so that if you pay for 100 Mbps they provision 120 Mbps and you actually get 100 Mbps.

Wireless speed is another story and totally independent of your WAN speed.

While I have a solid wifi network, I have 5 access points, one for each floor and one for outside, I still plug in whenever possible. I made sure to buy Roku that have ethernet ports and even bought the Google power adapter for my Chromecasts so they are wired ethernet and not wireless.

 

[RamblingMad]

I stream 4K via Amazon, so I need at least 30 for just that service as I mitigate bufferbloat at my router. I cut about 10% off my total bandwidth to do that.

Your problem sounds like a network congestion one. Your going to want to maximize your spatial streams for WiFi. I’d get a r7800 wireless router for that.

I’d also upgrade to a DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem as well.

I’d get at least a 60 service. I doubt you’ll use it up unless you have a bunch people streaming 4K and downloading game updates. If you do, I’d allocate 30 per 4K device. Your computers should use a lot less.

 

[sam_gordon]

A properly configured network should get much more then 50% of rated speed when plugged into an ethernet jack. I have 1 Gbps service and speed tests generally show 980 Mbps in both directions when plugged in. The missing 20 Mbps is the overhead associated with IP traffic. Some ISPs will even over provision so that if you pay for 100 Mbps they provision 120 Mbps and you actually get 100 Mbps.

Wireless speed is another story and totally independent of your WAN speed.

While I have a solid wifi network, I have 5 access points, one for each floor and one for outside, I still plug in whenever possible. I made sure to buy Roku that have ethernet ports and even bought the Google power adapter for my Chromecasts so they are wired ethernet and not wireless.

The key is what I bolded. What percentage of users do you think go in and tweak their network? Heck, I even try to, but even if I'm getting only 100mb (1/2 of what I pay for), it's been working having multiple people online.

 

[tvguy]

20Mbps is plenty for a single user (unless you're a hard core gamer). The guy with the 350Mbps service probably has issues with his Wifi and it's his internal network that's crashing. Or he has a bad modem. 350Mbps is PLENTY for probably dozens of people. There's something else going on there.

I don't doubt something else is going on. This Zoom world has let us see a whole lot more of people's personal lives, and this guy is a great guy, but is a whole lot less strict as a parent that I ever was. So his cell phone disappears for days at a time, hit kids unhook cables on his computer, and hit cat knocked something over and broke it.