How much bandwidth does my office need?

One question I’ve been asked consistently, by nearly every customer since I started in this industry (back in 1999), is “How much bandwidth does my office need?”

Unfortunately, there isn’t a rule of thumb for “Internet bandwidth per employee.” It also obviously differs from company to company, depending on the number of employees and what applications your employees are using, online.

For instance, is everyone doing normal Internet browsing or are your employees constantly uploading large HD video clips to a server in the cloud? Those two applications would require vastly different Internet bandwidth.

But hey, let’s be real. Most people (asking me this question), are working at companies with pretty average Internet activity, which means their Internet traffic mainly consists of something like this… Office 365, a web-based CRM/ERP, an occasional video conference, a lot of Googling, some remote people VPN-ing, and possibly a future hosted VoIP solution.

Sound a little like your company?

If so, (as someone who sells business Internet access daily), I’m going to give you the approximate amount of bandwidth I see companies using, based on their employee size.

Keep in mind, the amount of bandwidth needed for a 5-person company is not proportionally the same (per employee), as that of a 100-person company. I think you’ll agree, if your company only has 5 people in the office, the odds of everyone needing lightning fast Internet, all at the same time, is much higher than in a company with 100 people. Therefore, the more employees in your office, the lower your bandwidth-per-employee ratio.

Note: By “employees” I’m referring to only the employees who are utilizing the Internet, at a single location. I am not referring to the total number of employees in a company, across all sites and job descriptions.

So here are my rough estimates:

1 – 10 Employees

• Primary: 100M x 20M A-Symmetrical broadband Internet (i.e. business-class coax cable, FiOS Fiber, AT&T ABF, CenturyLink Fiber+, etc).
• Backup: None

11 – 20 Employees

• Primary: 200M x 20M A-Symmetrical broadband Internet
• Backup: Approx. 50% of these companies have a backup connection (i.e. 4G or an alternative broadband ISP).

21 – 40 Employees

• Primary: 300M Symmetrical, Dedicated Fiber Internet Access (DIA),
• Backup: 100M x 20M A-Symmetrical broadband.

21 – 75 Employees

• Primary: 500M Symmetrical, DIA,
• Backup: 200M x 20M A-Symmetrical broadband. Possibly using SD-WAN or a firewall to load-balance both connections.

76 – 200 Employees

• Primary: 1G Symmetrical, DIA
• Backup: 300M x 20M A-Symmetrical broadband. Possibly using SD-WAN or a firewall to load-balance both connections.

201+ Employees

• Primary: 1G Symmetrical, DIA
• Backup: 200M+ DIA. Possibly using SD-WAN or a firewall to load-balance both connections.

I know there are always exceptions but this is based on what I’m seeing in the business Internet marketplace, in general. I hope this information helps you finally answer the question “how much bandwidth does my office need.” … at least for the next year or two!

What questions do you have? Email me!

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About the Author
Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards and in 2011, he was honored as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. Follow Mike on LinkedIn, Twitter or SpiceWorks.