How fast wireless for streaming video

Good home internet speeds depend on what you use the internet for at home. The Federal Communications Commission FCC recommends internet speeds of Mbps for families with multiple internet users or for frequent online streaming. The FCC has defined broadband, or fast internet , as internet with download speeds of at least 25 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3 Mbps since The current fastest home internet speed is 2, Mbps, or 2 Gbps, and is offered by Xfinity in select areas.

Try these helpful hacks to improve your internet speed. Or if you just want more bang for your buck, check out providers near you with more speed for the price. Rather chat? Give us a call: Pro Tip: For best results, use an Ethernet cord to connect your router or modem directly to your device before you run the test.

Some streaming services suggest faster speeds, such as Fubo TV , which suggests minimum speeds of 40 Mbps. For Netflix, on the other hand, the minimum internet speed recommended for streaming is 3 Mbps, but recommended speeds vary by the quality you want to view.

YouTube TV recommends a minimum internet speed of 3 Mbps, but advises that how much speed you need may vary by video quality.

You need minimum speeds of Mbps to game online , but for a consistently good gaming experience, Mbps tend to be best. However, ping time and latency also matter. Ping time is more important for gaming than internet download speeds. A ping time of 20 milliseconds or less is great while milliseconds will give you a good gaming experience. Ping time can improve based on your download and upload speeds.

However, factors such as your local area connection and internet latency affect your ping time more than internet speeds.

The best internet for gaming is usually cable internet or fiber optic internet since they both provide low-latency internet connections, which means lower ping time.

Satellite internet tends to have high latency, even with fast download speeds, because the internet signal must travel so far between its source a satellite and its end destination your device. When available, fixed wireless internet is a better option for gaming than satellite in rural areas. Instead, they travel from a local tower directly to your home antenna. Fixed wireless internet also offers speeds comparable to cable and DSL internet. Satellite internet does not work well with sports games or shooter games because they require rapid data response times.

Other online games such as online card games, role-playing games, strategy games or puzzle games tend to work fine with satellite internet. Since many people around the world play sports and shooter games simultaneously, these types of games may block satellite internet users from playing. They block satellite users to prevent people from using lag to their advantage and compromising the gaming experience for other players.

To make your internet faster at home, you could boost your Wi-Fi signal to lower your latency. Resetting or moving your router can boost and stabilize your signal. You could also add a Wi-Fi repeater or extender to improve internet signals for gaming devices further away from your router.

You can also shop for a different high-speed internet service with faster speeds and a potentially more reliable connection. In response to the COVID pandemic, working and learning from home has become an everyday reality for much of the world. Major companies like Facebook, Twitter and Slack have all announced plans to let a portion of their employees continue to work from home permanently. With so much more work taking place inside the home, a fast and reliable internet connection — plus a setup that takes advantage of it — is more essential than ever.

If you can stream Netflix, you can use Zoom successfully. Columbia University Working from Home guide. Most work activities have relatively low bandwidth requirements. The best internet speed for working from home depends on what kind of work you do. If you frequently download and upload large files and participate in video meetings, we recommend at least 25 Mbps of download speeds for households with only one person working from home at a time.

For glitch-free video meetings, they recommend at least 20 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds. There are a number of steps you can take to help get your internet speed up to a comfortable level for working from home. If none of these steps increase your speeds enough, you might have to start spending money to see improved results.

Mesh networks use several small routers to spread your Wi-Fi connection throughout the home, and are particularly useful in bigger houses. As a general rule, the recommended internet speed for streaming in standard definition videos is 3—10 Mbps Megabits per second.

We break down which speeds are best for HDR and 4K below. For just one person on one device streaming a standard-definition SD show, you need a minimum of 3—10 Mbps. For HD videos in general, 10—18 Mbps is adequate for most streaming purposes. The higher the resolution, the more data you need to download it. Livestreaming turns your home into your own personal TV station, broadcasting high-resolution video to your fans.

To grow an avid fan base on a platform like Twitch, you need to deliver a quality experience. A reliable camera, good audio equipment, and a fancy gaming computer are all important investments for any dedicated streamer, but none of that makes much of a difference to those watching if your stream freezes and staggers throughout the broadcast. Although cable and fiber are about evenly matched in download speeds, they differ dramatically on upload speeds.

Cable connections can reach upload speeds between 5 Mbps and 50 Mbps, so the best cable plans can handle HD streaming, but slower connections will be lucky to deliver anything above Game Boy quality. Cable is also prone to slowing down at peak hours, so unless you stream in the middle of the night, you might have to plan around the inevitable drop in speed.

Fiber , on the other hand, has symmetrical upload and download speeds, which means if you have gigabit download speeds, you get the exact same speeds for your uploads.

All these factors make fiber the ideal connection for streamers. Latency is the time it takes for a signal to travel from your computer to a server on the internet. It essentially determines the reaction time of your internet connection. Having high latency will cause lag in games or calls, delaying your reactions and causing problems.

Because streaming is primarily one-way communication, latency is handled a bit differently than it is in a video call. Streaming software usually performs more encoding and compression on your video though you can adjust this in your settings in order to improve the final quality at the expense of a few seconds of delay. One important precaution for streamers to take is to use a wired connection to your router instead of Wi-Fi when possible.

Even fast, reliable Wi-Fi introduces a bit of extra latency into your connection, so a wired connection is definitely preferable. Do you have a solid internet connection but your video still looks choppy? Video game streams often suffer from dropped frames, where instead of the video playing smoothly from one frame to the next, the same frame will play twice in a row and then skip forward.

If enough frames are dropped, it can lead to jittery, uneven video. Although a slow or unstable internet connection can cause a stream to drop frames, dropped frames are often a problem with your capture card. Before you fork out the money to upgrade to a better capture card, there are a few things you can try. Author - Peter Christiansen.

Peter Christiansen writes about satellite internet, rural connectivity, livestreaming, and parental controls for HighSpeedInternet. Peter holds a PhD in communication from the University of Utah and has been working in tech for over 15 years as a computer programmer, game developer, filmmaker, and writer.

Cara Haynes has been editing and writing in the digital space for seven years, and she's edited all things internet for HighSpeedInternet. 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.