Bandwidth per User Planner

Size an internet connection on the people using it at once.

What you provide

Offices run 30% to 50%. Hotels and student housing peak far lower than the bed count.

Browsing and email 2 Mbps. Video calls 4 Mbps. HD streaming 8 Mbps. 4K streaming 25 Mbps.

Result

About 130 Mbps at peak, so a 200 Mbps link

Downstream capacity is rarely what people complain about. Upstream is: video calls, cloud backups and file sync all push, and asymmetric connections give the upstream a small fraction of the headline figure. Check the upload rating of any link before signing for it, and check whether the router can actually forward at the rated speed once firewall and inspection features are switched on.

Diagnostic telemetry
People served
50
Active at peak40% online at once
20
Per active user
5 Mbps
Peak demand
100 Mbps
With 30% headroom
130 Mbps
Nearest link tier
200 Mbps

What this cannot tell you

  • A planning estimate from the figures you enter, not a measurement. It does not test your connection or watch your traffic.
  • It sizes the link only. Whether the router can forward at that rate with firewall, inspection and VPN features switched on is a separate question, and it is where a surprising number of slow networks actually fail.

Take this with you

Bandwidth per User Planner on RunTheTests — free browser-based sysadmin tools, no sign-up.