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Comment by NoZebra120vClip | Hacker News Reader

Who needs 20Mbit/s for Zoom? Are they sending 4K UHD from a pro DSLR?

My ISP (cable modem) was around 25Mbit/s down, 5Mbit/s up in the before times, and they've rapidly upgraded speeds a few times since the lockdowns, but mine's been max 20Mbit upstream, and no complaints. I've used every app there is for realtime meetings.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362023-Zoom-sys...

Zoom recommended 3.8Mbit/sec. Most third parties recommend 5. 20 is ridiculous, and will allow for 3 of your kids playing Fortnite and Netflix all day while Dad's in meetings.

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4+ kids in a family is pretty common in Bountiful. Some I know have more than twice that (my own is >4). During COVID everyone would be in calls at the same time (school for kids, work for parent(s)). People are back in person now but we still have snow days occasionally.

So yeah, 20 Mbps up can really suck, especially when you realize the advertised speeds are only "up to."

4+ kids?! They don't call it Bountiful for nothing.

There are a lot of Mormons in Utah, and Mormons have a lot of kids.

Surely 4+ people in simultaneous FHD calls is a corner case, no?

School online was video conferencing for each kid on their own devices.

Remember that Zoom became popular during Covid. Another less recent but massively popular thing is TV streaming.

The point is: it’s a thought error to look at what is mainstream today to determine the potential of tomorrow. It’s akin to dismissing cheap electricity based on that we already have enough light bulbs.

Fast reliable internet is infrastructure, which is not exciting on its own. However, if widely available, new downstream opportunities open up that otherwise nobody would be foolish enough to invest in.

But most importantly, it’s not expensive for being infrastructure. Americans in particular are already overpaying insanely for internet.

You aren't just at the mercy of your housemates, at peak times 20Mb can drop to 1Mb easily. Advertised speeds are a theoretical maximum.

I suppose that my ISP has some really great backbone service in my area, then, because dropouts and "peak hours" mean nothing to me.

This assumes this is the only traffic on your network. Nowadays it's never true.

Also I'd guess most people's network has mote than one user at a time.

You can never apply the "____ is more than enough" theory to technology. Remember when DSL felt as fast as driving a Ferrari?

"640K [of memory] ought to be enough for anyone."

I'm sending 4k video from a moderately priced camera, sometimes to large conference rooms with a big screen and 4k projector.

> Who needs 20Mbit/s for Zoom?

No one cares about "needs". We want maximum bandwidth and zero limits on its use. We'll figure out what to do with it.

I'm on board, but if 10-gig costs $500/month, I'm going to have to reconsider. 100 Mbit (symmetric) for $40/month is a bit closer to what my budget can handle.

If you want to send a copy of your camera stream to everyone on the call from your device directly for lower latency...

That is not how Zoom works today...

AFAICR, Teams was still single-plexing like this as of ~2 years ago. I wonder if that has changed.

do you work for comcast?

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