Managing your business’s bandwidth needs
If you think about your business, every click, call, and cloud app your team relies on rides on one thing: network bandwidth. If your network can’t keep up, productivity plummets, customer satisfaction can be impacted, and you could lose your competitive edge and market share. It sounds drastic, but keeping all of your teams online at every location really is that vital to business operations.
And it all comes down to understanding your business’s bandwidth needs, how to monitor bandwidth, and how to scale your needs as your business grows and transforms.
What is bandwidth in networking?
Bandwidth is the lifeblood of your network. It’s the maximum amount of data that can flow through your Internet connection at once. It’s measured in megabits per second (Mbps) or gigabits per second (Gbps). Essentially, the bigger the bandwidth, the more your network can handle.
However, bandwidth isn’t just “Internet speed”. Speed is how fast data travels, but bandwidth decides how much data can move at any given moment. It’s kind of like plumbing. If you think about a water pipe, bigger pipes (higher bandwidth) mean more water (data) can flow through, even if the pressure (speed) stays the same.
For businesses using cloud apps, video calls, and a mountain of devices, bandwidth is critical to every-day productivity.
Key factors influencing bandwidth requirements include:
- The number of users and devices connected to the network.
- The type of applications being used (e.g., cloud-based software, video streaming).
- The frequency and intensity of online activities.
How much bandwidth does your business need?
Determining your business’s bandwidth requirements involves assessing current and future needs. Insufficient bandwidth can lead to sluggish performance, disrupted communications, and lost productivity. On the other hand, overestimating your requirements can lead to unnecessary expenses.
Steps to determine bandwidth needs:
1. Evaluate usage patterns
Start with a small use case and analyze how your team uses the Internet, what applications they use, and how much bandwidth those services require.
For example:
- Basic tasks (email, web browsing): Require minimal bandwidth (0.5–1 Mbps per user).
- Video conferencing (e.g., Zoom, Teams): Typically needs 1–3 Mbps per participant.
- Streaming and large file transfers: May require upwards of 5 Mbps per user.
From there you can evaluate other teams’ usage to determine how much bandwidth all teams would need.
2. Account for devices and users
Calculate the total number of devices connected to your network, including smartphones, laptops, and IoT devices. It’s a good idea to factor in some extra capacity here as when your business grows, the number of users and devices will increase, straining bandwidth.
3. Consider peak usage times
Your bandwidth needs to be able to accommodate surges in activity without impacting its performance. Productivity not only would take a hit if your network’s bandwidth couldn’t support peak periods, but your teams’ morale and mental health could be impacted by adding additional stress to challenging periods[TP3] .
Identify periods of high demand, such as company-wide meetings, collaborative sessions, peak delivery times for projects, seasonal demand, etc. One great example is Black Friday for eCommerce organizations. Their sites are flooded with additional site users, higher traffic, higher rates of transactions, pressures on internal inventory management and much more. You need to be able to accommodate this kind of surge without impacting customer experience or your teams’ activities. Everything needs to run as smoothly as possible in a high pressure situation like this with the right level of bandwidth.
4. Future-proof your plan
Look at what future growth might look like for your business. If your business’s wider goals involve growth, expansion into new regions, new locations, additional headcount, adopting new technology, or integrating bandwidth-heavy tools, it’s wise to opt for a higher bandwidth plan.
General network bandwidth recommendations:
On average, a business needs at least 25 Mbps of download speed and 3 Mbps of upload speed for everyday activities like emails, cloud application usage, data transfer, and video calls. But here’s some more detail to help:
- Small businesses (1–10 users): 25–100 Mbps.
- Medium-sized businesses (10–50 users): 100–500 Mbps.
- Large enterprises (50+ users): 500 Mbps to 1 Gbps or higher.
These are our general guidelines to understanding your network bandwidth needs. But working with a trusted partner, like a Managed Service Provider, can help you understand exactly what your bandwidth needs might look like in the future and how you can support operations as you grow.
How to increase network bandwidth
When network bandwidth falls short, your teams will feel it in low quality calls, dropped connections, and slow downloads.
If your current network bandwidth can not support your business activities, you’ll need to take steps to enhance it. Here are some practical ways to increase network bandwidth:
- Upgrade your Internet plan: The simplest solution is to contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to discuss higher bandwidth options. Many providers offer tiered plans that cater to businesses with varying needs. However, a good provider will ensure your plan aligns with your projected growth and usage.
- Set up network prioritization: Using network monitoring tools, you can identify non-essential applications or devices consuming bandwidth. You can also use traffic shaping to prioritize mission-critical packets. If your business uses SD-WAN, you can set up Quality of Service (QoS) to prioritize critical tasks like video conferencing or VoIP calls.
- Implement a load balancer: A load balancer distributes network traffic across multiple servers or connections. This reduces congestion, improves performance, and is a more efficient use of network bandwidth. Load balancing or load sharing is very good for businesses with high traffic volumes or multiple locations.
- Upgrade hardware: Outdated or improperly implemented networking equipment can be a bottleneck. For example, you could have an Internet plan of 10G, but the hardware is only capable of supporting 1G. Invest in modern routers, switches, and access points that support higher bandwidths and advanced features like dual-band or tri-band Wi-Fi.
- Network bandwidth monitoring: Regularly monitor your network for issues such as unauthorized users or bandwidth-hogging applications. Tools like network analyzers and monitoring software can help you track usage patterns and identify areas for improvement.
- Speak to a Managed Service Provider (MSP): An MSP, like Expereo, can help you determine what bandwidth your business needs now, and help you scale your network bandwidth needs based on your business goals. Therefore, creating a future-proof network strategy that keeps your business connected and productive.
Get the right bandwidth for your organization with Expereo
Your business deserves a network that works as hard as you do. Whether you’re fine-tuning your bandwidth, improving network performance, transforming your legacy network, optimizing your WAN, network optimization can be challenging, time and resource-heavy alone.
With 20 years’ experience working in the Internet and managing thousands of networks globally, we understand the Internet better than anyone. We can work with your unique needs to design, build and run a high-performing enterprise network that’s fit for the future.
Get in touch to discuss your needs.