· 5-minute read
How much speed does a family need? Count the evening hour
Choose a speed not by how many people live at home but by what runs at the same time in the evening, when everyone is in. The rule, and three families worked out.
What each use takes
Streaming services publish their own advice: Netflix recommends 3 Mbit/s for HD and 15 Mbit/s for 4K. We count with a margin, because a stream’s rate changes from scene to scene: 25 Mbit/s for a 4K stream, 8 for HD, 4 each way for an HD video call.
- A 4K TV or TV box: 25 Mbit/s
- HD video on a phone or laptop: 8 Mbit/s
- A video call, an online lesson or a work meeting: 4 Mbit/s down and 4 Mbit/s up
- Websites, messages, music: 1–2 Mbit/s, hardly worth counting
80% of the tariff speed
Wi-Fi, walls and the far room take part of the speed, so plan on 80% of the tariff. On a 100 Mbit/s tariff about 80 Mbit/s is comfortably usable in the evening.
Three examples
- Two people: one 4K TV and two phones: 25 + 8 + 8 = 41 Mbit/s. Internet 100 is enough, with about twice that in reserve.
- A family of four: two 4K TVs, two phones and a video call: 25 × 2 + 8 × 2 + 4 = 70 Mbit/s. The 80 Mbit/s of a 100 tariff is close to the edge; Internet 300 is comfortable.
- A family that games: a 100 GB game takes 2 h 47 min to download at 100 Mbit/s, 56 minutes at 300 and 33 at 500. If the TVs are on while it downloads, choose 500.
Upload speed
Video calls and sending photos or work files to the cloud depend on the upload speed. On our tariffs upload is half the download: 50 Mbit/s on the 100 tariff, 500 Mbit/s on the 1000.
How to measure
Measure on a computer plugged into the terminal by cable. A phone on Wi-Fi in the far room will show less than the tariff: that is the Wi-Fi’s limit, not the line’s. What to do in a big flat is in a separate article.
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