This article is intended to help event organizers understand bandwidth needs at their events.

TABLE OF CONTENTS


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 SizeAverage bandwidth per attendee, per hourAverage bandwidth consumed by entire session, per hour
501.5 MB75 MB
1002.0 MB200 MB
2003.0 MB600 MB
5004.0 MB2000 MB
10005.0 MB5000 MB


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

Presentation computers connect to the same real-time services as attendees and moderators, however, we recommend using a wired connection to the Internet if one is available. A wired connection with 5 Mbps connectivity should be more than sufficient for Conferences i/o. 

Total data consumption by a presentation computer will be minimal when compared to the total data used by attendees. However, the following table gives estimates on bandwidth consumption per hour, during very heavy usage (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 SizeAverage bandwidth consumed by presentation computer, per hour
5010 MB
10015 MB
20030 MB
50075 MB
1000150 MB