What internet speed is enough? What home Internet speed do you really need Speed 40 Mbps.

07.10.2020

Today, the Internet is needed in every home no less than water or electricity. And in every city there are a lot of companies or small firms that can provide people with access to the Internet.

The user can choose any package for using the Internet from a maximum of 100 Mbps to a low speed, for example, 512 kbps. How to choose the right speed and the right Internet provider for yourself?

Of course, the Internet speed must be chosen based on what you do online and how much you are willing to pay per month for Internet access. From my own experience, I want to say that the speed of 15 Mbps suits me quite well as a person who works on the network. Working on the Internet, I have 2 browsers enabled, and each has 20-30 tabs open, while problems arise more from the computer side (to work with a large number of tabs, you need a lot of RAM and a powerful processor) than from the Internet speed. The only moment when you have to wait a little is the moment when the browser is first launched, when all the tabs are loaded at the same time, but usually it takes no more than a minute.

1. What do internet speed values mean

Many users confuse Internet speed values thinking that 15Mb / s is 15 megabytes per second. In fact, 15Mb / s is 15 megabits per second, which is 8 times less than megabytes, and at the output we will get about 2 megabytes of download speed for files and pages. If you usually download movies for viewing with a size of 1500 Mb, then at a speed of 15 Mbps the movie will be downloaded in 12-13 minutes.

We watch a lot or a little of your Internet speed

The speed is 512 kbps 512 / 8 = 64 kbps(this speed is not enough for watching online video);
The speed is 4 Mbps 4 / 8 = 0.5 MB/s or 512 kB/s(this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 480p);
The speed is 6 Mbps 6 / 8 = 0.75 Mbps(this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 720p);
The speed is 16 Mbps 16 / 8 = 2 Mbps(this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 2K);
The speed is 30 Mbps 30 / 8 = 3.75 Mbps(this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 4K);
The speed is 60 Mbps 60 / 8 = 7.5 Mbps
The speed is 70 Mbps 60 / 8 = 8.75 Mbps(this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
The speed is 100 Mbps 100 / 8 = 12.5 Mbps(this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality).

Many connecting the Internet are worried about the possibility of watching online video, let's see what kind of traffic movies with different quality need.

2. Internet speed required to watch online video

And here you will find out a lot or a little of your speed for watching online videos with different quality formats.

Broadcast type	Video bitrate	Audio bitrate (stereo)	Traffic Mb/s (megabytes per second)
Ultra HD 4K	25-40 Mbps	384 kbps	from 2.6
1440p (2K)	10 Mbps	384 kbps	1,2935
1080p	8000 kbps	384 kbps	1,0435
720p	5000 kbps	384 kbps	0,6685
480p	2500 kbps	128 kbps	0,3285
360p	1000 kbps	128 kbps	0,141

We see that all the most popular formats are reproduced without problems with an Internet speed of 15 Mbps. But to watch video in 2160p (4K) format, you need at least 50-60 Mbps. but there is one BUT. I don’t think that many servers will be able to distribute video of this quality while maintaining such a speed, so if you connect the Internet at 100 Mbps, you can never watch online video in 4K.

3. Internet speed for online games

When connecting home Internet, every gamer wants to be 100% sure that his Internet speed will be enough to play his favorite game. But as it turns out, online games are not at all demanding on the speed of the Internet. Consider what speed popular online games require:

DOTA 2 - 512 kbps
World of Warcraft - 512 kbps
GTA online - 512 kbps.
World of Tanks (WoT) - 256-512 kbps.
Panzar - 512 kbps
Counter Strike - 256-512 kbps

Important! The quality of your game online is more dependent not on the speed of the Internet, but on the quality of the channel itself. For example, if you (or your provider) receive Internet via satellite, then no matter what package you use, the ping in the game will be much higher than that of a wired channel with a lower speed.

4. Why do you need Internet more than 30 Mbps.

In exceptional cases, I might recommend using a faster connection of 50 Mbps or more. Not many providers in Kyiv will be able to provide such a speed in full, Kyivstar is not the first year on this market and it inspires confidence, the more important is the stability of the connection, and I want to believe that they are on top here. A high Internet connection speed may be necessary when working with large amounts of data (downloading and uploading them from the network). Perhaps you are a fan of watching movies in excellent quality, or you download large games every day, or upload videos or work files of large volumes to the Internet. To check the connection speed, you can use various online services, and to optimize the work you need to run.

By the way, speeds of 3 Mbps and below usually make surfing the net a little unpleasant, not all online video sites work well, and downloading files is generally not happy.

Be that as it may, there are plenty to choose from in the Internet services market today. Sometimes, in addition to global providers, the Internet is offered by local firms, and often the level of their service is also on top. I am served by such a small company. The cost of services in such firms is, of course, much lower than that of large companies, but as a rule, the coverage of such firms is quite insignificant, usually within a district or two.

In order to take into account all the nuances when choosing an Internet tariff, you need to know a few facts about the principles of the network that will help you use the services more efficiently.

Megabits and megabytes are two different things. 1 Mbps is about 8 times larger than 1 Mbps. It turns out that having an Internet speed of 8 Mbps, we get a real speed of about 1 Mbps. A 5 MB music track will download (or fully download) in 5 seconds. Thus, knowing your needs in the network, you can calculate the time for which this or that task will be completed at the current tariff.

The final speed of the Internet is determined not only by your provider. Its performance is influenced by the most important factors, for example, network equipment, the speed of the remote server, the level of the wireless signal, the speed of the end device, and so on. If your provider proudly claims 50 megabits per second, then watching a movie online, you may simply not get such a speed, because that computer with the movie is somewhere far away. The server is busy distributing this film to several thousand or even tens of thousands of the same users.

This is comparable to a wide pipe through which a small stream flows: the source (server) is no longer able to give, and all the extra space is empty. A similar situation occurs if you are with a tablet through 2 walls and a layer of furniture from the router - the speed of the Wi-Fi channel will drop, and no matter how fast Internet comes to your house, it will reach the device at other, lower speeds.

An important indicator of the quality of communication is ping. In essence, ping is the speed of access to data on the Internet, i.e. How fast is the request. If the ping is high at high speed, then there will be practically no sense from it: requests will go slowly. A large ping has a particularly negative effect on ordinary web surfing, where each mouse click is sending a request, as well as on online games, where the synchronism of what is happening in real time depends on ping.

One of the most frequent and demanding user tasks - online video. If everything is not so important with music, because the size of the compositions is small, then with the video you should always pay attention to the quality in which you watch it. The higher the quality, the slower the buffering (loading) of the movie or clip. For example, 480p quality requires almost half the speed of 1080, although many reputable sites automatically set video quality, so the problem is not so significant.

Torrents are the surest test of speed. Here, users' computers act as a server, and the speed of sending information to your computer is summed up over all servers. As a result, the overall upload speed can be very high, capable of loading any Internet channel.

Considering all these factors, the following recommendations can be made.

about 5 Mbps will be more than enough for web surfing and listening to music at the same time, and the Internet channel can be shared by several devices with such tasks
10 Mbps can ensure uninterrupted playback of FullHD video on 2 devices, and on the third one you can browse pages quite comfortably
20 Mbps is already a serious speed that will allow you to watch a FullHD movie with simultaneous torrent download, and you can still safely hang a phone with a tablet on the channel and comfortably watch Youtube. For correspondence and web surfing, the speed is excessive.
40 Mbit. Older routers just don't support these speeds anymore. Needless to say, 40 Mbps is enough for everything. It can only be recommended to users with special tasks, such as an FTP server or working with files in cloud systems. You should not take such a speed if you are just listening to music, chatting on the Internet and sometimes watching movies. It will be an overpayment.
60 Mbps and above. Yes, at present, some providers offer such numbers, and they are really rarely needed. It happens that the provider promises even 100 Mbps and higher at night, but to support this speed you need expensive powerful routers and "gigabit" cables. Almost all mobile devices will not be able to open at this speed, and the computer needs either an expensive motherboard with a 1000mb network card, or a gigabit network card.

Given the average requirements of Internet users, in modern conditions, Internet speeds of 15-20 Mbps are sufficient for almost all tasks. Most often, large numbers mislead users, as if promising that "everything will be fast." But providers are well aware that only a quarter of the same 60 Mbps will be used, so in fact you are supplied with 15-20 Mbps at the price of 60. Most often, the difference is felt only when working with torrent clients, but for most users this is hardly worth the overpayment.

Russia has a very good and, no less important, affordable home Internet. Seriously! In villages and a very deep province, things are, of course, worse, but take any, even a small city in the European part of the country and look at the tariffs. For 300-400 rubles a month, you can bring Internet to an apartment at a speed of around 25-50 megabits per second, and for some promotion, all 100 megabits.

For comparison: in "civilized" countries, fast Internet (both home and mobile) costs an order of magnitude more expensive. And the concept of “monthly data limit” still lives there. We have this left only with cellular operators.

However, cheapness is not a reason to pay for something that you do not use. Even a hundred rubles saved warms the wallet, and therefore the tariff for home Internet must be chosen based on the real needs for speed. Let's figure out how many megabits per second are required in various situations, and start with basic concepts.

Megabits, megabytes and real speeds

The data size is usually measured in bytes. For example, an HD movie weighs between 700 megabytes (megabytes) to 1.4 gigabytes (gigabytes), while Full HD is 4 to 14 gigabytes.

It is customary to indicate the data transfer rate in bits (not bytes!) Per second, and sometimes this causes misunderstanding.

Byte ≠ bit.

1 byte = 8 bits.

1 megabyte = 8 megabits.

1 megabyte per second = 8 megabits per second.

If the user does not distinguish between bytes and bits, then he can easily confuse them or take them for the same thing. In this case, it will calculate the approximate download time of an HD movie via torrent like this:

The film weighs 1,400 "mega".
Internet speed 30 "mega" per second.
The movie will download in 1400 / 30 = 46.6 seconds.

In fact, the Internet speed is 30 megabits per second = 3.75 megabytes per second. Accordingly, 1,400 megabytes should be divided not by 30, but by 3.75. In this case, the download time will be 1,400 / 3.75 = 373 seconds.

In practice, the speed will be even lower, because Internet providers indicate the speed "to", that is, the maximum possible, and not working. In addition, interference, especially when transmitting over Wi-Fi, network congestion, as well as limitations and features of user equipment and service provider equipment, all contribute. You can check your speed with , and increase it with .

Often the resource from which you download something becomes the neck. For example, your Internet speed is 100 megabits per second, and the site gives data at a speed of 10 megabits per second. In this case, the download will occur at a speed of no more than 10 megabits per second, and there is nothing to be done about it.

What internet speed do you really need

Obviously, the above table needs clarification.

Questions and answers

What to do if the Internet is used on two or more devices at once?

Let's say you watch Full HD streaming video on a smart TV, your wife is surfing YouTube on a laptop with an HD screen, and your child is also watching something from a smartphone or tablet in HD quality. Does this mean that the numbers from the table need to be summed up?

Yes, absolutely right. In this case, you will need about 20 megabits per second.

Why do different sites have different speed requirements for watching videos of the same resolution?

There is such a thing as bitrate - the amount of information that encodes an image per unit of time, and, accordingly, a conditional indicator of picture and sound quality. The higher the bitrate, the better the image, as a rule. That is why on torrents you can find versions of the same movie with the same resolution, but different sizes.

In addition, there are ultra-smooth videos at 60 frames per second. They weigh more and require faster internet.

Is it true that online games are so undemanding to the speed of the Internet?

Yes, for most games like CS, Dota 2, WoT, WoW and even GTA 5, only one megabit per second is more than enough for multiplayer, but in this case, ping becomes decisive - the time it takes for a signal to travel from you to the game server and back. The lower the ping, the lower the delay in the game.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to know in advance even an approximate ping in a particular game through a particular provider, since its value is not constant and depends on many factors.

Why does the picture and sound from the interlocutors go to me normally during video calls, but not from me to them?

In this case, not only the incoming, but also the outgoing Internet speed becomes important. Often, providers do not indicate the outgoing speed in the tariff at all, but you can check it yourself using the same Speedtest.net.

For broadcasting through a webcam, an outgoing speed of 1 megabit per second is sufficient. In the case of HD cameras (and even more so Full HD), the requirements for outgoing speed increase.

Why do ISPs start at 20–30 or more megabits per second in tariffs?

Because the higher the speed, the more money you can take. Providers could keep tariffs "from the past" at a speed of 2-10 megabits per second and reduce their cost to 50-100 rubles, but why? It is much more profitable to increase the minimum speeds and prices.

What does the concept of “normal Internet speed” imply, what should it be for optimal work and leisure time on a personal computer. The same connection will seem to someone quite sufficient, and to someone - the inability to work effectively. What is normal for an Internet cafe, for the University of Moscow State University, for example, "will not be enough."

Using computers at home raises reasonable questions for users: what is the speed of a suitable tariff plan.

If the finances of the PC owner are limited, when choosing a tariff for home Internet, he will definitely come across a number of offers from providers that prevent him from making the right decision. To avoid mistakes, you should know some parameters that determine the quality of the Internet at home.

To determine, you first need to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts.

Bits, kilobits, megabits

Data transfer speed is usually measured in bits / sec. But since a bit is a very small value, kilobits or megabits are used:

Kilobits = 1024 bits.
Megabit = 1024 kilobits.

With the advent of optical cables, Internet speeds have increased dramatically. If earlier 128 kbps was considered normal, today the parameter is measured in megabits and is 100 megabits per second (Mbps).

Therefore, megabits per second is the standard unit for measuring the speed of the modern Internet. The conditional classification of Internet communications is as follows:

slow - 512 Kbps;
low - 2 Mbps;
medium - 10 Mbps;
high - 50 Mbps;
very high - 100 Mbps.

It must be understood that the lower the speed, the lower the tariff.

A byte is not a bit

Internet users are interested in working with files, their size is usually measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes, equal to:

Byte - 8 bits.
Kilobyte = 1024 bytes.
Megabyte = 1024 kilobytes.
Gigabyte = 1024 megabytes.

Inexperienced users confuse bytes with bits. And they get megabits (Mbps) instead of megabytes. This leads to a serious error, for example, when calculating the download time of files.

It is unrealistic to accurately determine the period for downloading a file, because:

Providers indicate the maximum connection speed. The average (working) will be lower.
The speed is reduced by interference, especially if a remote router is used.
The remote FTP server restricts downloads so much that everything else becomes irrelevant.

But the approximate time, nevertheless, is possible to establish. Calculations will be easier if you round:

byte = 10 bits;
kilobyte = 1 thousand bytes.

But it's better to just start downloading and determine the download time using the program than to calculate the time theoretically.

What tasks affect the choice of speed

The lower the Internet connection speed, the smaller the range of available tasks, but the tariff is cheaper. The right choice allows you to feel comfortable without wasting money.

Outlining the circle of interests

The Internet is used to solve various problems:

Surfing social networks, listening to music.
Online games.
Organization of streaming broadcasting (stream).
video calls.
Watching videos online.
Downloading music, movies, other files.
Uploading files to cloud storage.

Choose a connection

When the circle of interests is defined, we set ourselves tasks and choose the appropriate tariff.

Providers offer various types of connection, for example, 300 rubles per month for Internet access at a speed of 15 Mbps.

There are two numbers in the tariff descriptions:

the second is the transfer (Upload).

If the second number is missing, then the speeds are equal. If necessary, check with your internet service provider.

How much internet speed is enough

To determine this indicator, the user is helped by a number of tasks that he needs to work with a PC:

For social networks and music

You don't need high speed to surf social networks and listen to music. The user will feel quite comfortable with 2 Mbps. Even a speed of 512 Kbps will do, but the pages of the sites will open more slowly.

To watch videos online

The following speed indicators for watching videos online are considered normal, depending on the quality of videos and movies:

SD Video (360p, 480p) - 2Mbps
HD video (720p) - 5 Mbps
Full-HD (1080p) - 8 Mbps
Ultra-HD (2160 p) - 30 Mbps.

100 Mbps - this speed is more than enough to watch online video in any quality. Because browsing is buffered, small dips in speed do not affect browsing.

For streams

To organize streaming broadcasting, you need a stable Internet connection. For a quality stream, the speed should not fall below a critical level. For video stream:

480p - 5Mbps
720p - 10Mbps
1080p - 20Mbps

But these are risky values. The transmission is the most critical, since broadcasting is the uploading of data to the Internet, so we focus on it.

Still, jumps are possible. The tariff is chosen so as to level them.

We calculate the optimal speed for the Internet by multiplying the speed of a quality stream by 2.5. For example, let's calculate the speed for 480p: 5 x 2.5 = 12.5 Mbps.

Taking into account the fact that the boundary values are risky, we select Upload not lower than 15 Mbps.

Online Games

Games are undemanding to speed parameters. For most popular games, 512 Kbps is sufficient. This value is suitable for:

Dota 2.
World of Warcraft.
GTA.
World of Tanks.

But downloading the game and downloading updates at 512 Kbps will be very slow, as you will have to download tens of gigabytes. In order not to wait for hours, it is better to provide speeds up to 70 Mbps.

For games, the determining factor is the quality of the communication channel, characterized by the parameter "ping" (ping). the time it takes for a signal (request) to reach the server and return back (response). Ping is measured in milliseconds (ms).

Ping is affected by:

The reliability of the Internet provider, which consists in the ability to maintain the declared quality of communication.
Distance from client to server. For example, the player is located in Sevastopol, and the World of Warcraft game server is in London.

Acceptable ping values:

A persistent ping value above 300ms on any servers is seen as a symptom of serious network connection problems. The reaction time is extremely low.

For smartphones and tablets

If the device is connected to the router via Wi-Fi, it will work in the same way as a computer. The difference is that advanced sites offer pages for gadgets with convenient placement of information on a small screen.

But smartphones and tablets are “sharpened” for mobile Internet. Cellular operators for working with the Internet offer:

3G standard - up to 4 Mbps;
4G standard - up to 80 Mbps.

The operator's website contains a coverage map with marked 3G and 4G zones. The relief of a particular area makes adjustments, then instead of 4G there will be 3G, and instead of 3G there will be 2G - the standard is too slow for the Internet.

4G communication is provided only by devices equipped with modern radio modules.

In the mobile Internet, the client pays for traffic, not for speed. The question of choosing a normal Internet speed for the device is not worth it. The user selects the appropriate amount of megabytes of traffic.

For video calls

voice calls - 100 Kbps;
video calls - 300 Kbps;
video calls (HD standard) - 5 Mbps;
voice video communication (five participants) - 4 Mbps (reception) 512 Kbps (transmission).

In practice, these values are multiplied by 2.5 to compensate for spikes.

Factors affecting connection speed

The following factors affect the quality of the connection:

Wi-Fi standard supported by devices.
The frequency at which data is transmitted.
Walls and partitions in the signal path.
Computer and browser settings.
VPN and proxy.
Outdated drivers.
Interference from other networks.
Viruses and malware.

You can find out the current connection speed (it is better to check at night) using the SpeedTest service. If it is very different from the one declared by the provider, you need to find the reason.

When choosing a connection speed, the number of users connected to Wi-Fi, the speed characteristics of tasks used in parallel mode and taken into account when choosing a suitable tariff are taken into account.

Conclusion

You can use the Internet in different ways. It is difficult to enumerate all the tasks set. But among those considered, it is necessary to find a similar one and decide on the connection.

Today, the Internet is needed in every home no less than water or electricity. And in every city there are a lot of companies or small firms that can provide people with access to the Internet.

The user can choose any package for using the Internet from a maximum of 100 Mbps to a low speed, for example, 512 kbps. How to choose the right speed and the right Internet provider for yourself?

1. What do internet speed values mean

Many users confuse Internet speed values thinking that 15Mb / s is 15 megabytes per second. In fact, 15Mb / s is 15 megabits per second, which is 8 times less than megabytes and at the output we will get about 2 megabytes of download speed for files and pages. If you usually download movies for viewing with a size of 1500 Mb, then at a speed of 15 Mbps the movie will be downloaded in 12-13 minutes.

We watch a lot or a little of your Internet speed

The speed is 512 kbps 512 / 8 = 64 kbps (this speed is not enough to watch online video);
The speed is 4 Mbps 4 / 8 = 0.5 MB / s or 512 kB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 480p);
The speed is 6 Mbps 6 / 8 = 0.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 720p);
The speed is 16 Mbps 16 / 8 = 2 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 2K);
The speed is 30 Mbps 30 / 8 = 3.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 4K);
The speed is 60 Mbps 60 / 8 = 7.5 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
The speed is 70 Mbps 60 / 8 = 8.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
The speed is 100 Mbps 100 / 8 = 12.5 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality).

Many connecting the Internet are worried about the possibility of watching online video, let's see what kind of traffic movies with different quality need.

2. Internet speed required to watch online video

And here you will find out a lot or a little of your speed for watching online videos with different quality formats.

Broadcast type	Video bitrate	Audio bitrate (stereo)	Traffic Mb/s (megabytes per second)
Ultra HD 4K	25-40 Mbps	384 kbps	from 2.6
1440p (2K)	10 Mbps	384 kbps	1,2935
1080p	8000 kbps	384 kbps	1,0435
720p	5000 kbps	384 kbps	0,6685
480p	2500 kbps	128 kbps	0,3285
360p	1000 kbps	128 kbps	0,141

3. Internet speed for online games

DOTA 2 - 512 kbps
World of Warcraft - 512 kbps
GTA online - 512 kbps.
World of Tanks (WoT) - 256-512 kbps.
Panzar - 512 kbps
Counter Strike - 256-512 kbps

4. Why do you need Internet more than 30 Mbps.

In exceptional cases, I might recommend using a faster connection of 50 Mbps or more. Not many people will be able to provide such a speed in full, the company "Internet to Home" is not the first year on this market and it inspires confidence, the more important is the stability of the connection, and I want to believe that they are on top here. A high Internet connection speed may be necessary when working with large amounts of data (downloading and uploading them from the network). Perhaps you are a fan of watching movies in excellent quality, or you download large games every day, or upload videos or work files of large volumes to the Internet. To check the connection speed, you can use various online services, and to optimize the work you need to run.

By the way, speeds of 3 Mbps and below usually make surfing the net a little unpleasant, not all online video sites work well, and downloading files is generally not happy.

Be that as it may, there are plenty to choose from in the Internet services market today. Sometimes, in addition to global providers, the Internet is offered by local firms, and often the level of their service is also on top. The cost of services in such firms is, of course, much lower than that of large companies, but as a rule, the coverage of such firms is quite insignificant, usually within a district or two.