Working From Home: Why is my internet so slow?

While working from home shortens the commute, you may be wondering why is my internet access moving slower than when I was at the office? The answer to your question is your internet bandwidth. While many companies have a larger internet bandwidth at work you may not have the same at home.

Many of us pre-COVID may have streamed a few videos on YouTube and buffering may not have been much of an issue. Now with everyone at home on video conferences, you may not have enough bandwidth. Now while looking at your Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) website you may not be sure what you need. To help, please see what each of the metrics means as it relates to bandwidth.

• Download Speed: Download speed reflects how quickly you can access things online. Faster download speeds will load your websites, Netflix movies, and work email more quickly. Basically this is how fast data can come in to your various devices.
• Upload Speed: Upload speed tells you how quickly you can put things on the internet. Faster upload speeds will help get the more picture perfect video conference you are looking for or that email to send more quickly. Basically this is how fast data transfers out.
• Data: Everything you do online uses data, with streaming and downloading large files typically uses up the most data overall. Most internet providers allow you to use at least one TB of data each month but some offer unlimited data at a higher billing rate.

Review.org gives a very good recommendation for high speed internet and how much download and upload speed the most popular video web conferencing apps utilize (Zoom, Slack, Skype, Cisco Webex, Google Hangouts, etc.)

We hope you all are remaining safe and productive during this difficult time.