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Aug 2, 2021 Share
Remote work is now more common than ever, but do you have the best internet speeds you need to work from home? Here are the minimum internet speeds we recommend for one person working from home:
There are exceptions, however. We’ll break down how much bandwidth you need for smooth sailing on conference calls, staying on top of emails, and keeping up with the office gossip. We’ll also show you what to do if your internet connection isn’t fast enough.
Fiber internet providers like EarthLink, Google Fiber, and AT&T Fiber are the best for working from home. You’ll get equally fast upload and download speeds, which are especially great if you’re required to transfer large files to a remote server or be on video calls. Here’s a list of fiber internet providers and the speed ranges they offer. Check out specific provider plans below or enter your zip code in the tool above for more information about fiber internet plans for working from home available near you.
According to our annual customer satisfaction survey, EarthLink is the best fiber internet provider in overall satisfaction, speed satisfaction, price, reliability, and customer service. Verizon and AT&T generally maintained the second and third spots across the board, although AT&T ranked fifth in customer service.
If you can’t get fiber internet, cable is your next best option for working from home. Download speeds range from 25–1,000 Mbps, but upload speeds are slower than what you’ll get with fiber internet. For instance, your plan may support download speeds of up to 400 Mbps, but the upload max may be only 30 Mbps. Here is a list of cable internet providers for working from home:
Our annual customer satisfaction survey revealed that Cox was the best cable internet provider for overall satisfaction. It also ranked the highest in speed and customer support, while Mediacom ranked the highest in reliability. Suddenlink was the highest ranking cable provider for price. Meanwhile, Spectrum and Xfinity—the two largest cable internet providers in the US—ranked in the bottom half of our survey. Xfinity ranked the lowest out of 12 for customer service and price. However, it outranked Spectrum in terms of reliability and speed. Bottom line: Based on customer feedback, EarthLink is the best fiber internet provider, and Cox is the best cable internet provider. To see if these providers are in your area, enter your zip code below.
You need 8 Mbps of download speed for each person in your household who will be using Zoom, which is also the recommended download speed for Skype. Even if you don’t use Skype, 8 Mbps per person ensures that your conferencing application has enough breathing room to function without kicking you off mid-sentence.
Video calls require sending and receiving real-time video simultaneously, so there are a few internet speed factors you should keep in mind to get the most out of your remote meetings. These are download speed, upload speed, and latency:
Most video conferencing applications work best with less than 150 ms of latency. You can’t control your connection’s latency as directly as you can change your speed by upgrading, but know that lower latency is better. Moreover, certain types of internet connections (like fiber) tend to have lower latency than others (like satellite internet). The speeds necessary for many video calling apps aren’t very high. Most households with an internet connection can manage at least the minimum requirements. That’s great because it means we can all stay connected. If you do run into issues with video conferencing, your upload speed is most likely the culprit. Internet providers generally give customers much less upload speed than download speed (except most fiber internet providers). So even if your download speed is safely in the clear for video calls, your upload speed might not be up to par for big group calls. Turning off your video or switching to a wired connection can help.
You need only about 1 Mbps of internet bandwidth per instance for chat and email. However, you may need more bandwidth when you share photos or videos in your conversations, and when downloading larger assets (like images and attachments) from emails. But you don’t need to worry about basic text conversations hogging your bandwidth. Thankfully, you can carry on with your chat and email conversations while you work on other projects without worrying about internet interruptions. That’s because Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Slack, and similar applications usually don’t use a lot of bandwidth.
We recommend about 5 Mbps of download speed per person for heavy web browsing and jumping between sites. Browsing the internet doesn’t take too much data unless you’re visiting pages with a lot of uncompressed images or video content. But if you’re scrolling through social media, we suggest that you go slightly higher than our recommendation, especially if you have video autoplay enabled. The average web page uses about 2 MB (megabytes) of data. That translates to 16 Mb (megabits) because there are eight bits in one byte. So if you want a whole web page to load within a second, 16 Mbps of download speed would be great. But you often don’t need to load the entire assets of a web page to start getting to the content you want, and loading a web page doesn’t take a continuous stream of data—you just download the content once, and that’s all you need for as long as you’re on that page.
We recommend 5 Gbps of download speed at a minimum per person for streaming media. If you stream music or have a show streaming in the background while you work (or someone else in your house is binge-watching all of Sailor Moon on Hulu), make sure to factor that into how much internet you need to work from home effectively. This is especially important for video services like YouTube or Netflix because video can be a bit of a bandwidth hog.
If you want to use YouTube or a streaming service like Netflix while working from home but run into bandwidth issues like buffering, check your video quality settings. YouTube videos can run on as little as 0.7 Mbps at 360p, but they can use up to 20 Mbps if you’re watching in 4K. Similarly, standard-definition Netflix can work with as little as 0.5 Mbps, but Netflix in 4K uses up to 25 Mbps. And if you’re using it only as background noise, you don’t need 4K.
We recommend at least 10 Mbps of download and upload speeds for sharing large files. While there are certain requirements around most things you do online, when it comes to jobs that necessitate a large amount of file sharing, the faster your internet is, the better. That’s not to say you absolutely need fast internet speeds to download and upload large files, but it makes things go much faster and more smoothly. Here are a few examples of how long it would take to transfer various sizes of files using common internet speeds.
Many factors play into your internet connection needs, including your job, the applications you use for work, and, most importantly, how many other people are using your home internet. You’ll need more internet speed if, for instance, your kids, partner, or roommates are also online playing games, watching Netflix, or working from home. And you’ll want faster speeds if you handle a lot of large files and media (like uploading video). Our internet speed recommendations are generalized. You may need less or want much more. Many internet service providers (ISPs) offer customers speeds much higher than this recommendation—all the way up to 2,000 Mbps.
If you’re looking for more internet speed recommendations for online activities like gaming or streaming video, check out our How Much Speed Do I Need tool. 
Beyond the speeds you get from your internet provider, older home networking equipment, your network layout, and inefficient connections in your home can also affect your internet speeds. If your internet speed woes stem from something in your network rather than the speeds from your provider, check out our guide to faster internet in your home.
If you’re running into problems with your internet connection and slow speeds are to blame, the first thing you should do is run a few internet speed tests on the devices you use for work to make sure you’re getting close to your plan’s advertised speeds. If you’re not getting speeds that meet your expectations, try repositioning your Wi-Fi router’s antennas for better coverage—or, better yet, connect your work device to your router with an Ethernet connection—and try again. Sometimes the only things you can do to fix your internet speed woes are rationing your internet bandwidth or upgrading to a faster connection. You can free up some bandwidth by limiting non-essential internet traffic during work hours, but if that’s not practical, check out the internet providers in your area to find a plan that better fits your needs.
You want at least 10 Mbps of download speed and 1 Mbps of upload speed of dedicated internet bandwidth for each person working from home. That’s enough internet speed to allow for a couple of different connections at the same time without interruptions. If you have more people working (or learning) from home, you’ll need more speed. For example, a household with one work-from-home parent, a child who is distance learning, and another parent (who does not work from home) might want a 25 Mbps or higher plan to make sure everyone can use the internet effectively. Some people can get by with less internet speed, and many want more speed for photo or video uploading and so on.
A fast internet speed depends on how much bandwidth you need to do what you want online without interruptions like buffering or slow load times. The FCC classifies anything above 25 Mbps as broadband internet, but ISPs offer speeds ranging up to 1,000 Mbps or more. We recommend about 30 Mbps per household as a good place to start if you’re looking for a plan for regular internet use. But you may need less or more if you work from home, stream a lot of Netflix, play online games, or have more than four people using the same connection. What is the average internet speed in the US?According to our internet speed test results, the average internet speed in the US is 42.86 Mbps. Keep in mind that this average spans internet users across different speed tiers and in different areas of the country. And just because it is the average doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good internet speed for you. Does shutting off video help meetings?Disabling your video can free up some bandwidth to improve a conference call’s audio. Moreover, participants can turn off their camera feed to lighten the shared load, especially if they don’t need to appear on the screen. Why does my internet slow down at certain times?Many types of internet services are affected by network traffic, including cable and DSL. So, if a lot of people in the same area are on your provider’s network simultaneously, you could see slower speeds in your home network.
Author - Rebecca Lee Armstrong Rebecca Lee Armstrong has more than six years of experience writing about tech and the internet, with a specialty in hands-on testing. She started writing tech product and service reviews while finishing her BFA in creative writing at the University of Evansville and has found her niche writing about home networking, routers, and internet access at HighSpeedInternet.com. Her work has also been featured on Top Ten Reviews, MacSources, Windows Central, Android Central, Best Company, TechnoFAQ, and iMore.
Editor - Cara Haynes Cara Haynes has been editing and writing in the digital space for seven years, and she's edited all things internet for HighSpeedInternet.com for five years. She graduated with a BA in English and a minor in editing from Brigham Young University. When she's not editing, she makes tech accessible through her freelance writing for brands like Pluralsight. She believes no one should feel lost in internet land and that a good internet connection significantly extends your life span. |
