If your business is like most, the question of bandwidth — and how much an organization truly needs — is posed often and answered rarely. The unfortunate truth is there is no one-size-fits-all answer to how much business bandwidth is needed. It’s a moving target — at best, an educated guess — that relies on a matrix of various data points, which also can be hard to define.
So where do you start? You dig into the data.
7 Business Bandwidth Drivers
Consider these seven drivers when conducting your company’s next bandwidth audit to shed some light on your business’s bandwidth usage needs.
1. Usage
Ultimately, the amount of bandwidth you need is driven by your network configuration and bandwidth-dependent business applications. Simply put, how do you use your network?
- What information goes over the internet vs. data transport?
- How many employees access the network?
- Do you use a VPN connection?
- Do you have a guest network?
2. Applications
What isn’t in the cloud these days? From Office 365 and VoIP phone systems to Content Delivery Networks and Customer Relationship Management platforms, cloud-based applications are both commonplace and bandwidth dependent. Each application is accessed dozens of times a day by most, if not all, employees simultaneously — incrementally using up bandwidth. Moreover, this push and pull of data — as information travels rapidly in both directions — relies on a symmetrical bandwidth connection to keep productivity high as data is created, saved and later accessed.
3. Utilization
A common rule of thumb is that once your business network reaches 70% utilization, you will feel the pain of a slowdown. Many organizations go to great lengths to filter content on their corporate networks to maximize the bandwidth available for business applications while guest networks are the Wild Wild West — anything goes with few restrictions.
Unfortunately, there’s a catch with this approach: Content filtering on corporate networks creates latency, which negatively impacts the very business traffic you’re trying to protect. Not to mention, there’s often as much effort expended in limiting access — if not more energy since limiting access also requires regular monitoring — as there is in simply increasing bandwidth to accommodate the additional traffic.
4. Latency
How much latency can your business tolerate? Businesses that use videoconferencing or a VoIP phone system, for instance, likely will notice a poor connection without a consistent, low-latency, high-bandwidth network
By its simplest definition, latency is a delay that occurs while processing data over an online connection. Without a low-latency connection, will your employees stumble through a first impression with a sales prospect? Or will customers need to wait to place an order?
For enterprises that require real-time data replication, any more than 15 milliseconds of latency will result in poor performance. High-latency connections aren’t just an inconvenience, they also can affect productivity and even bottom-line revenue.
5. Video
Without question, video is among the biggest drivers of significant bandwidth usage. From videoconferencing applications like Teams and Zoom to streaming applications like Netflix and YouTube, video usage is a leading bandwidth hog and can impact the performance of the rest of your network.
For example, your network can’t decipher if a request is an employee downloading a large video or if your CEO is on a Zoom call with investors. But if both attempt to access the network simultaneously — and your network has insufficient bandwidth or high latency — both will suffer because of it.
Videoconferencing relies on packets of data being sent and received consistently and in real time to ensure that the call remains clear, with every inflection, gesture and word correctly transmitted. Without adequate bandwidth and a low-latency connection, jitter — which is any variation in latency over time, including packet loss and congestion — can quickly deteriorate call quality and user experience.
6. Data storage
Just as increased data creation drives increased data storage, increased data storage drives increased bandwidth capacity — and every business across every industry is affected. Whether your business-critical data requires real-time replication or overnight data backups that are transmitted via a private network — it is imperative to determine the appropriate bandwidth to accommodate this critical function.
And since this increase in data now takes longer to backup, more and more businesses cite high-speed bandwidth as a top priority for network investments.
7. Multiple locations
Finally, all of these drivers amplify bandwidth needs even further for multi-site businesses as increases in locations and, subsequently, headcount play a role in determining bandwidth usage. Whether ensuring access at branch locations or making cloud assets securely available, your business must have adequate bandwidth so that team members and guests alike have the same experience, whether at your corporate headquarters or a satellite office.
Now that you understand business bandwidth, what’s next?
If you’re ready, we can help you dig in. Have an Everstream expert walk you through a business bandwidth audit to figure out the right amount of bandwidth for your business.