As the title states.
Both myself and my parter are avid gamers.
All 4 kids are also gamers, but watch Netflix etc. too and with our current connection, all is fine.
Our main concern is that we both are remote workers and work from home, anything that throttled our internet connection would become unsustainable to us.
Some sites say that 70mbps is pushing it, but should be okay, others say it’s completely untangible
Any advice is greatly appreciated
If I understood right, you’re downgrading your connection from 500 to 70Mbps, and the question is whether this will be enough for six people?
I’d say it depends on to what degree all six of you will be doing bandwith intensive things at the same time.
For example, Netflix recommends minimum 15Mpbs for a 4k stream, so if all six of you will be doing that on separate screens at the same time, you’ll be about 20Mpbs short. But if everyone is on 1080 screens you’ll be fine as the requirement is 5Mpbs per stream.
Remote work doesn’t necessarily require a lot of bandwidth, although it depends on what you actually do for work. MS Teams for example only requires about 2Mpbs for group video calls.
Most gaming also doesn’t require a lot of bandwidth, but of course downloading games and their updates does.
Will it work? Yes I think so, though you may encounter times when it gets laggy.
Don’t forget if work has a VPN the speeds will be slowed even further! My wife and I both have VPN for WFH… we have Xfinity 1200D/40U and she is constantly complaining her video calls are dropping. We test speeds when she is not on VPN and (wirelessly) she gets around 300D/20U but then we connect to her works VPN and it suddenly goes to about 80D/7U. When I wirelessly am on VPN I get 130D/20U.
No downloading during business hours 😁
Yeah and turn off cloud connected home video cameras. Video upload is horrible at that connection speed with 6 users.
Maybe set up a small server on the network that can act as a cache, like steam cache for example.
Caching proxy server.
I would not want to do that. One game update and the whole connection is struggling. Xbox/PS5 downloading something in standby? Not fun.
One game update and the whole connection is struggling
What are you smoking. Ive run a 60mb connection for 10 years and been fine with multiple things downloading.
Use a router with Cake SQM (or other good QoS) and configure it correctly, on both upload and download. In my experience, managing multiple sites, this is a life saver.
This really is the answer. I host a 20 person lan party on a 100/100 circuit and even got by with a 14/2 circuit the year before that. QoS is the key to prioritizing traffic and making this work.
I leverage OpnSense but probably more consumer friendly options available.
OP this is the key. 70 Mb is probably ok. That’s what we have (4 people, 5 when my MIL’s here), and it’s typically plenty. Very rarely do we saturate bandwidth beyond bursting let alone have multiple people simultaneously trying to saturate bandwidth. However, all it takes is one beefy download or upload, and everyone else is screwed. Keeping everyone happy during those times, especially the gamers, requires not just QoS but QoS that can help with both bandwidth and bufferbloat. It’s possible to achieve with highly configurable QoS, but Cake is easy and effective.
My last router made it pretty easy to throttle the connections to specific IP addresses. I made it so the kids and TV received lower priority than my work computer, and all was well.
Upload speeds are a very relevant part of this. My connection is 150mbps down but only 20 up and it’s great for downloading but I can barely manage a single 1080p/60 stream for remote access/gaming when I’m away from home.
Given you’re dependent on internet access for remote work, I’d be investigating higher bandwidth options because it sounds like a recipe for frustration. Imagine having a child home sick and having to negotiate their Netflix time because it’s causing issues with important virtual meetings… it might be fine, but do you really want to find out at the most inconvenient time?
if everyone is at home and using their devices, you will notice issues. if the work and the gaming/netflix are done at different times it can be done with little issues.
I wouldn’t skimp… imagine a world were your boss, partner and your kids are screaming at you because thats were this is headed.
It’s a contention network, not guaranteed. Look to your neighbors… Or maybe, of you are lucky, your router is overheating.
Why are you downgrading? Call the company and see if they have any specials for like 2 years at a reduced cost for the 500Mbps
Given it has decent ping and upload, I think You will be fine.
Gaming requires latency. Streaming 1080p requires 5mb down Steaming 4K needs about 25mb Zoom 1080p requires 2mb up and down Security cameras could use 1-2mb up
The important for zoom is uploads. If you have cable with 10mb up, you could struggle. If it’s 70/70 you should be ok.
You’ll be fine. I’ve lived in a house of 5 (student housing), all pretty big gamers, on a ~68mbps connection (UK broadband sucks). It was completely fine most of the time, with some occasional lag when a couple other people were doing bandwidth heavy things (like torrenting or downloading Steam games).
Perhaps in your router you could set QoS rules to prioritize traffic to your work machines during work hours.
Setup QoS and listen to everyone else complain, moving from 500 to 70 is not something I would recommend since you usually don’t even get the advertised speed.
I think the key would be to have good QoS, though I’m not really sure what to buy for that. A lot of consumer routers claim to have it, but idk how good it is.
Why are you lowering your speeds. Even with very good QOS you are pushing it.
70Mbps fiber is prob fine.
The problem is going to be something like video calls or VPN if anyone starts a large file download, like a game install or something if they don’t throttle it. It will eat up most of that and cause issues with anything that is sensitive to download speed/latency. It will still prob work, but you will notice quality drops. Video streaming is likely fine, 10-15Mbps per person is doing ok for that typically.
70Mbps on a non-fiber line, it will suck badly. The upload is likely pretty low, and using most of your upload will crash the download speeds and kill VPN connections and video calls. Not to mention 70Mbps on non-fiber is advertised ‘max’ speed, actual ‘guaranteed’ speeds could be half or lower and when I worked for an ISP there was zero guarantee’s on latency or occasional packet loss which will murder VOIP, voice calls, and VPN connections.
You mentioned 70mbps download, but what is your upload bandwidth? It’s often surprisingly terrible.
After a month of terrible internet connectivity, I noticed issues occurring when a particular device was turned on. After investigation, I spotted the issue was being caused by Microsoft OneDrive saturating my upload bandwidth. The issue caused problems with download and upload on all devices connected to the network.
People and ISP marketing focus on downloads but in reality it’s important to focus on upload to the same degree as download.