Table of Contents

Bandwidth

The amount of data you can squeeze through a connection is often titled "bandwidth". You can test network bandwidth with iperf.

Common real life connection speed

Here's a list of select link speeds in bit/s and byte/s for comparison. The table contains estimates of real life net data rates, not the theoretical maximum data rate.

Units:

Technology bit/s byte/s
USB2 33MiB
USB3
GbE
10 GbE
SMBv2
SATA 6G

Common applications

If the bandwidth needed is not symmetrical, ↓ means downstream (server→client) and ↑ means upstream (client→server). This is always per User.

Application Protocol/setting bit/s Packets/s
VoIP G.711 87.2Kb3
G.729 31.2Kb
TeamSpeak (10 people) ↓25.9Kb ↑233Kb4
Netflix SD Quality (480p)
Full HD (1080p) ↓5Mb
Ultra HD (4K) ↓25Mb

Gaming bandwidth

Platform Game bit/s Packets/s
PS4 Battlefield 4 ↓150Kb5
PC Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

[1] many people incorrectly assume that a Kilobyte is 1024 Byte, instead that'd be a Kibibyte
[2] 1E6 in scientific/engineering notation means 1·106 = 1 000 000