

If you're streaming to Twitch or YouTube for the fun of it, then maybe shelling out a bunch of money for an upgraded internet connection isn't worth it. If you're running a personal Netflix setup out of your house or hosting any other sort of bandwidth-intensive endeavor then you, naturally, need the bandwidth to make it happen. If you're living a very cloud-centric life with remote backups for your computers and phones, as well as using security cameras and other bandwidth-hungry devices, you need a good upload speed to avoid waiting around forever to complete backups or downgrading your security camera's video quality. Incremental backups after that weren't that long, but they certainly weren't speedy. My first complete backup took weeks to complete. Worse yet, in order to leave upload bandwidth for everything else, I had to throttle the backup upload speed to even less than that. Related: What's the Best Way to Back Up My Computer?īack in the day when I first started using remote backup for my computers, for example, I only had a 3 Mbps upload. Whether you're uploading all your local files to Dropbox or you're streaming all your security cameras to a cloud service, a slow upload speed really hampers the process. If uploading large files is a routine part of your hobby or job, however, it's certainly worth upgrading to a better internet package to cut down on sitting around waiting for uploads to finish. You're not going to get 100-times the live streaming experience by having a connection with 100-times more bandwidth than the live stream to YouTube, Instagram, or Twitch demands. That's because much like there is an upper threshold to how much bandwidth you need to download, say, HD video, there is also an upper threshold to how much bandwidth you need to upload HD video. You're downloading more data than you're sending back.Īdditionally, you might note that "Cloud-based Backup" is the only open-ended entry in the list. That's because how much data you need to download and upload for some experiences like video conferencing or online gaming is asymmetric. You might also notice that the recommended bandwidth for some of the entries varies between this upload speed list and the download speed list in the companion article. In the same way, when you're browsing the web or picking a Netflix show, you're just saying "Hey, that one right over there," and then the remote servers send the big bundle of data you requested your way. You send a request to the retailer and they ship you a big ol' box of stuff you ordered.

Think of it like you're placing an online order for physical goods.
