

If you've ever tried to send a text at midnight on New Year's Eve and were unable, that is an example of a system being overloaded. The internet is just like any other transportation system: The more crowded it is, the longer it will take to get from point A to point B. That rate is the speed that is possible under ideal circumstances. Unfortunately, the maximum internet speed (as stated by your service provider) is probably not the speed you will actually have.

The higher your internet speed is, the faster you can download (or upload) files, and the more efficiently you can work. At 100 Mbps, it would be closer to six minutes.Įverything that you do on the internet, including working from home, involves downloading (or uploading) megabits of data. If, however, you wanted to download that same movie in high definition at the 20 Mbps speed, it would take nearly a half-hour. If you had a speed of 100 Mbps, it would only take about one minute. To give you an idea of what that looks like, with a speed of 20 Mbps, it would take approximately five minutes to download an entire standard definition movie to your computer. If the speed of your Internet service is 20 Mbps, under optimum conditions, that means you can download 20 megabits of data in one second. Currently, this is expressed as megabits per second (Mbps). Without getting too technical, internet speed is simply the rate at which your internet connection delivers data to your home network. However, there are numerous other factors that contribute to the speed you may actually need in a practical, real-life work-from-home situation. For instance, if you want to be able to listen to music, partake in video conference calls, download large files, browse the internet, and access your email, 20 Mbps should be plenty fast enough. While the precise answer to that question depends on the nature of your work, it is fairly simple to get a quick ballpark number. If you've never had to depend on your home internet for a living, you’re probably wondering what internet speed you need to work from home. Additionally, you need to have a strategy in place to ensure that you have the bandwidth needed to work unencumbered by issues such as slow page loads and excessive buffering. Your first concern should be finding a location in your home that offers the most reliable WiFi connection. But contrary to what you might be thinking, the prime location for your new home office isn't necessarily that spare room on the top floor that you've been using as storage space. Now what? Your first order of business is to decide where that shiny new home office will go. Your company has decided that you are the proud new owner of a home office.
