Can Your Event Venue Provide the Bandwidth You Need for Streaming Video Without Interruption?
In order for your Live Streamed Event to be a success you need to know your venue’s exact, Streaming Speed capabilities.
In the case of Live Streaming Events, the UPLOAD (outward sending) speed is far more important than download (incoming) speed.
Note: Download (incoming or viewing) speed is only important if you plan to view videos on the Internet, like you may do on YouTube, so it is not important in this scenario.
When it comes to Download Speed, most computers can receive video streams of between 3 and 5 Mbps (more for later models). Mobile devices, can typically handle stream rates of 2 Mbps or less – again more for later models. However this is not important for streaming video outwards.
Upload Speed is the critical factor when it comes to live streaming an event.
While an upload speed of 1 Mbps (one Megabit per second) may be adequate for sending a single SD (Standard Definition) stream, HD (High Definition) streaming requires much more.
For a single HD stream (720p) to be sent out, you will require a minimum 3 Mbps (Megabits per second) of upload speed to be available. Whereas to stream a single stream in Full HD (1080p) could consume at least 5-10 Mbps!
Generally we do not send out a single stream, but we send out multiple (3 or more) streams simultaneously – known as MBR or Multiple Bit Rate streaming. This is explained in greater detail on our main website. It means sending out 3 streams simultaneously as follows:
- 300 Kbps (kilobits per second) for folks watching on mobile devices
- 800 Kbps for Standard Definition video for folks whose incoming bandwidth may not be great.
- 2.0 Mbps for a regular HD (not full HD) 720p stream for those folks who have faster download speeds available at home.
In addition one may sometimes send out a Full HD stream requiring 7-12 Mbps for itself alone, for folks who have huge Internet speeds available to them. But in amost business situations, this is rarely used – it is more useful for watching movies or concerts rather than for business events.
So, even assuming we do not send out the Full HD stream, a typical MBR scenario would require about 300+800+2000=3.1 Mbps of upload speed.
But wait…
To account for slowdowns in the Internet connection which occur more often than not, we need to double or even triple the Mbps to play it safe.
Generally, for streaming events in MBR, we ask for a venue to provide at least 10 Mbps of Upload speed (remember, Download speed is not important here).
With that amount of Upload speed capacity available, we can rest assured that our outgoing stream will handle most eventualities comfortably.
A handy App to use in determining your venue’s Upload speed capabilities, can be found at Speedtest.net – of course, this is only useful if you personally do a site visit and test the speed at the venue. More likely, you would request the venue for your optimum Upload Bandwidth by contacting the venue’s tech team and asking them to confirm that they can provide what you require.
Note: most hotels and business centers can easily provide upload speeds far greater than 10 Mbps, sometimes 100 Mbps or more, but they do have to be informed in advance that you wany a higher than usual upload speed and not the low upload speeds they would typically provide to hotel guests.
To determine how much bandwidth you would actually consume during the event you can use our handy Bandwidth Calculator. Note: this is only important in determining the cost of your stream and has nothing to do with upload speed – since pricing is often determined by the amount of Megabytes or Gigabytes used up during the broadcast.
We hope this article has been useful in helping you determine the bandwidth and upload speeds needed to make your event stream a success.
If you have any questions or need more information, you are welcome to call me directly at 604.970.5055 or send me an email.
HAPPY STREAMING!