Internet/wifi speed what is enough?

An issue came up the other day that has me looking into our internet/wifi speed. A guest was running 4 computes and pulling 84% of the bandwidth from the system. I did not look at the logs to see what he was doing (I don’t want to know). With 900Mbps service at the house usually it is not an issue but this was caught as my IPS flagged it. We do not have a cap but they send out a notice when the traffic is strange. Anyway, I have a backup provider in the house that has 50Mbps service. Do you think this is enough? This would only be used for the guests devices and usually one or two guests. Things like Netflix streaming on the TV would stay on the main provider along with all of our own traffic. Therefor the 50Mbps service would be all for them.

As for zoom calls and other streaming 50Mbps should be enough. But do you all find people run speed checks then complain as they THINK it is not good enough? Oh, this 50Mbps service will sit on 2 dedicated in house mesh routers and one external back yard router so access is available everywhere.

Thank you for any feedback.

-G

I think I would want to know.

50Mbps is fine. Don’t advertise a speed, that way no-one can complain they aren’t getting the speed quoted in the listing.

JF

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I would definitely want to know why a guest is running FOUR computers and it sounds like a shared home listing?

50mbps is fine for regular streaming. But I’d want to know. Because otherwise you could get in trouble for whatever your guest is doing…

Thank you for your replies. I did go through the logs today, he was connected to 4 VPNs all at the University he is attending.

Oh an it is a shared home listing.

How did you find out the VPNs were at the University? Four VPNs at the same time doesn’t sound right.

Something around 5 to 10Mbps per person is reasonable for general residential use.

50Mbps is very reasonable if you are providing a listing where you are expecting guests to work remotely.

I would expect your ISP flagged your usage for one of 2 reasons:

  • The ISP thinks somebody might be tapped into your service without you knowing.
  • The ISP thinks the traffic patterns indicate something might be illegal or malicious (pirating, spamming, hacking)

One thing to consider is the type of service you have. If you have Cable, then your 900Mbps might just be the download speed but upload is probably limited to 35Mbps. Using all of your upload bandwidth would grind your home network to a halt and if the 84% number considers the least common denominator (the upload bandwidth), then the guest might not be using as much bandwidth as you think, he’s just not using it in a typical way for a residential internet service.

Looking at the logs 4 different mac addresses were connected to the VPN. All traced to the University. So each device was connected to the VPN.

Just like the credit card card companies do my ISP sends me a notice when it is really high use. They use to do it with my own nightly backups but don’t see that as unusual anymore.

Anyway, thank you all for feedback. I am going to move the guests to my other ISP to isolate them.

Excellent wifi wireless reception provided, 8mb up, 4 mb down, which may not be what you are expecting or what you are accustomed to.
This is ours, and as written in the Houfy listing, but not on air, if they ask for info, I copy paste this. No-one has complained since we upgraded to this.

Don’t advertise a speed, as they can then complain and get a discount if they claim they didn’t get it.
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I spent many years in network and application engineering. Many good (but inexpensive) routers are easy to setup with a 2ndary network and cap it to whatever Mbps you want.
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IMO, it is perfectly reasonable to limit guest access to say 100 Mbps. Certainly no higher than 250 Mbps.
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Legitimate use does NOT need a ton of bandwidth. He was either doing illegal stuff with torrents or a ton of bitmining, etc.

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I’d say 3 mbps upload and 25mbps download is the absolute minimum.

50 mbps is solid, but don’t advertise a speed on the listing as that could lead to potential complaints and discount requests.

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Interesting to read the feedback about what speeds are considered fair. Trying to figure out the same…