Average User Download Speeds

Question

Any ideas what the average user's download speed is? I'm working on a site that streams video and am trying to figure out what an average download speed as to determine quality.

I know i might be comparing apples with oranges but I'm just looking for something to get a basis for where to start.

Answer 1

Speedtest.net has a lot of stats broken down by country, region, city and ISP. Not sure about accuracy, since it's only based on the people using their "bandwidth measurement" service.

Answer 2

It would depend on the geography that you are targeting. For example, in India, you can safely assume it would be a number below 256kbps.

Answer 3

Try attacking it from the other angle. Look at streaming services that cater to the customer you want, and have significant volume (maybe youtube) and see what they're pushing. You'll find there'a pretty direct correlation between alexa rating (popularity) and quality(minimum bitrate required). Vimeo will always have fewer users than Youtube because the user experience is poor for low bitrate users.

There are many other factors, and this should only form one small facet of your bandwidth decision, but it's a useful comparison to make.

Keep in mind, however, that you want to degrade gracefully. As more and more sites come online you'll start bumping into ISPs that limit total transfer, and being able to tell your customers how much of their bandwidth your site is consuming is useful, as well as proclaiming that you are a low bandwidth site.

Further, more and more users are using portable cellular connections (iPhone) where limited bandwidth is a big deal. AT&T has oversold many markets so being able to get useful video through a tiny link will enable you to capture market that vimeo and Hulu cannot.

Quite frankly, though, the best thing to do is degrade on the fly gracefully. Measure the bandwidth of the connection continuously and adjust bandwidth as needed for a smooth playback experience with good audio. Then you can take all users across the gamut...

-Adam

Answer 4

You could try looking at the lower tier offerings from AT&T and Comcast. Probably 1.5 Mbps for the basic level (which I imagine most people get).

The "test your bandwidth" sites may have some stats on this, too.

Answer 5

There are a lot of factors involved (server bandwidth, local ISP, network in between, etc) which make it difficult to give a hard answer. With my current ISP, I typically get 200-300 kB/sec. Although when the planets align I've gotten as much as 2 MB/sec (the "quoted" peak downlink speed). That was with parallel streams, however. The peak bandwidth I've achieved on a single stream is 1.2 MB/sec

Answer 6

The best strategy is always to give your users options. Why don't you start the stream at a low bitrate that will work for everyone and provide a "High Quality" link for those of us with FTTH connections? I believe YouTube has started doing this.

Answer 7

According to CWA, the average US resident has a 1.9Mbps download speed. They have data by state, so if you have money then you can probably get a more specific report for your intended audience. Keep in mind, however, that more and more people are sharing this with multiple computers, using VOIP devices, and running background processes that consume bandwidth.

-Adam

Answer 8

Wow.

This is so dependent on the device, connection method, connection type, ISP throttling, etc. involved in the end-to-end link.

To try and work out an average speed would be fairly impossible.

Think, fat pipe at home (8Gb plus) versus bad wireless connection provided for free at the airport (9.6kb) and you can start to get an idea of the range of connections you're trying to average over.

Then we move onto variations in screen sizes and device capabilities.

Maybe trawl the UA stings of incoming connectins to get an idea of the capabilities of the user devices being used out there.

Maybe see if you can use some sort of geolocation solution to try and see how people are connecting to your site to get an idea of connection capabilities as well.

Are you offering the video in a fixed format, i.e. X x Y pixel size?

HTH.

cheers,

Rob

Answer 9

If I'm using your site, "average" doesn't matter. All I care about is MY experience, and so you either need to make the site adaptive, design for a pretty low speed (iPhone 2G gets you 70-80 kbps if you're lucky, to take one common case), or be very clear about the requirements so I can decide whether or not my connection-of-the-moment will work or not.

What you don't want to subject your users to is unpredictably choppy, intermittent video and audio.