This article is intended to help event organizers understand bandwidth needs at their events.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Bandwidth for attendees and moderators
- Data usage
- Recommended connection speed
- Considerations for presentation computers
Bandwidth for attendees and moderators
Because Conferences i/o is built for performance, even over slow connections, the bottleneck at events tends to be wireless access point saturation. That is, a wireless access point may not be able to accept every device that is trying to connect to it.
Data usage
Conferences i/o total data consumption varies by the size of a session, and how actively the session is being used. Larger sessions consume more data per person, because there are more transactional changes.
The following table gives estimates on bandwidth usage assuming very heavy usage (e.g., non-stop polling and Q&A). These numbers assume that everyone at the event is using the venue's wireless network. Your actual usage is likely to be far below these numbers.
| Session Size | Average bandwidth per attendee, per hour | Average bandwidth consumed by entire session, per hour |
| 50 | 1.5 MB | 75 MB |
| 100 | 2.0 MB | 200 MB |
| 200 | 3.0 MB | 600 MB |
| 500 | 4.0 MB | 2000 MB |
| 1000 | 5.0 MB | 5000 MB |
Recommended connection speed
In general, a minimum rating of 30 Kbps per attendee is recommended.
For a 100-person session, this works out to a 3.0 Mbps connection.
For a 1000-person event, this means a 30 Mbps connection.
Considerations for presentation computers
| Session Size | Average bandwidth consumed by presentation computer, per hour |
| 50 | 10 MB |
| 100 | 15 MB |
| 200 | 30 MB |
| 500 | 75 MB |
| 1000 | 150 MB |