What Downloading Speed You Really Need

While choosing the internet pack for our Wi-Fi, most of us always get confused about which one to pick up. The local internet service providers probably offer a range of services, from low-cost alternatives to the highest speeds. But what download speed do you need for your online activities? Different tasks need different minimum internet speeds. If you love to play games and binge-watch Netflix, then you need to know the best internet speed for gaming and streaming. In this post, we will look at what is a good internet speed Mbps, how fast should download speed be, and the minimum downloading speed for normal internet activities. 

How Fast Download Speed Do I Need: Average Bandwidth Requirement 

Most of us don’t know the minimum downloading speed to do daily online activities and end up paying for costly packages for high bandwidth. Because service providers advise that! So, you need to calculate the bandwidth requirement you need first, based on the online activities you do. 

It may surprise you that most daily online habits aren’t all that demanding. Activities such as email (or any other text-based communication such as chatting), streaming music, or just surfing the web for information or scrolling social media take very little bandwidth. And a very common misconception is that high-quality video streaming or playing games need high-bandwidth. How much download speed do you need for streaming? With a gigabit fiber connection, you can stream 4K movies to TVs in every room of your home and all of your mobile devices, with plenty of bandwidth left over.

Note: Additional bandwidth does not make a low-bandwidth activity better. There is a limit to how much bandwidth a certain activity may use. If you require 5 Mbps of bandwidth to watch a smooth and stutter-free HD video stream, 500 Mbps will not make a vast difference. It’s merely unused bandwidth that you’re paying for.

Calculating Your Internet Bandwidth Requirements

Consider how your family really uses the internet and choose an internet subscription accordingly. You don’t need over 15-20 Mbps of bandwidth for a single person who regularly scrolls Instagram while streaming 4K content Netflix. What about a big family where many people are all streaming video and, maybe, gaming at the same time? Multiply those actions by the number of users in your home.

Tip: To calculate your overall bandwidth requirements, multiply the number of users in your home by 25 Mbps.

The fact is that most homes only need 50-100 Mbps of minimum downloading speed to satisfy all their demands. Even a family of individuals that are almost always online won’t need more than 200 Mbps to provide everyone with a pleasant experience. If you have a high-speed connection but still don’t have the seamless experience, we highly advise you to update your router to a more capable one. Actually, when you reach a specific bandwidth tier, your router is incapable of handling that. 

When You Need Good Downloading Speed 

If you want to download files real quick, then you need a good internet speed.  Suppose you have a 100 Mbps internet connection and are going to download a new game of 100 GB. From a 100Mbps bandwidth connection, you can expect a download speed of roughly 12.5 MB/s. (Internet speed is measured in megabits. To get your downloading speed, split the internet speed by 8)

So, if everything is right, downloading the game would take roughly 2 hours and 15 minutes. A gigabit connection of 1000 Mbps will give a good downloading speed of roughly 125 MB/s. In ideal circumstances, downloading your game would take roughly 13.5 minutes. By the way, let’s emphasize the phrase “perfect circumstances.” Even with a gigabit connection, the distant server is often a bottleneck. However, as you reduce the download size, the download time becomes less noticeable. A 1000 Mbps connection would take 8 seconds to download a 1GB file, whereas a slower 100 Mbps connection would take 1 minute and 20 seconds. All you have to do now is determine if the price difference between the lower and higher tier internet packages is worth the time savings for you. If you download a lot of items and dislike waiting, the extra money you pay to get the files and other downloads right now could be worth it. However, unless you have another compelling reason to upgrade, you’re definitely better off keeping the money and investing it in a better router.

So, that’s all for today. For more tips and tricks, follow Techburner!