To stop that happening, here is how to choose the right bandwidth for a fast download, and what part a symmetrical connection plays.
Different Plans and Data Allowances
What decides the speed and smooth running of downloads (downlink) and uploads (uplink) is the ratio between uplink and downlink. Most providers’ plans currently sit somewhere between 40 Mbit/s download with 8 Mbit/s upload and 1000 Mbit/s download with 50 Mbit/s upload.
But why is there such a large gap between download bandwidth (also called data rate) and upload bandwidth?
To understand the reason, it helps to look at how internet use worked in the past. Only a few years ago, households and businesses downloaded far more data than they uploaded. Providers designed their plans around that reality. Which is why most connections are asymmetrical, with a stronger downlink than uplink. But with social media and cloud backup, applications now sync continuously in the background — without users doing anything at all.
That this shift in internet use calls for a balanced ratio between uplink and downlink often goes unnoticed when a data plan is chosen.
Download and Upload: How It Works
When you download files or media from the internet — opening documents from the cloud, playing films and series on Netflix, saving an email attachment in your mail client — the whole data package is broken into many small packets. As soon as one of those packets arrives successfully, a signal confirming the download goes back to the sender, and once that is acknowledged the next packet is downloaded. If the upload of that signal is too slow or fails, the download stops. That is how you get slow downloads and error messages even when there should be plenty of download bandwidth. So the internet is no longer a one-way street. Connections today are bidirectional — which means the uplink matters too if Wi-Fi is to deliver high service quality.
The Right Bandwidth for Uploads
The only fix for this problem is the right upload bandwidth. And different use cases need different bandwidth to work well, depending on how people use them.
So a private Wi-Fi network and a publicly available Wi-Fi network with many different users have to be treated differently. In private households, a ratio of 100 Mbit/s downlink to 50 Mbit/s uplink is entirely sufficient for fast internet use. A public Wi-Fi network has to handle very different demands than a private one with a handful of users if it is to work everywhere. For use cases serving large numbers of users — congress centers, hotels, or busy public spaces, for example — symmetrical lines or lines with a balanced download-to-upload ratio are the better choice. Our recommendation: the downlink should be no smaller than half the uplink to keep the connection adequately dimensioned. Asymmetrical connections are also much harder to assess, because the two directions throttle each other. In a business setting we recommend a symmetrical line of around 100 Mbit/s uplink and downlink.
Not sure which bandwidth your use case needs to give every user a flawless browsing experience? We are happy to advise you as a business customer. Send your enquiry now via our contact form.
