Does uploading videos affect a fast NBN internet service for others in the home?

I thought I'd share this interesting observation I made recently. Often we don't really know how one person in a household can affect the experience of another person in a household when both are accessing the internet. In fact, even though people can affect each other, many people won't realise what is happening.

For those following my YouTube channel there's a variety of content but it really all started when I started adding Red light camera/Speed Camera location videos to provide more content/information for those accessing the site www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au. Most of the videos were fairly short at about 1-3 minutes, covering from the speed camera warning sign or speed sign before a camera and then some time after the intersection.

As I could afford better technology I was able to capture longer videos and I could include the location of red light camera/speed camera as part of longer videos. This then led to posting dashcam videos of longer drives. My thought was I could use the videos for other things such as enjoying the longer drive videos whilst I was perhaps exercising on an exercise bike.

Then naturally I went to the next step where I could have videos of bike rides to enjoy whilst exercising on the exercise bike over winter. Now whilst I haven't actually done much watching of videos on the exercise bike, the videos are there if I need them and other people can use them as well.

Back to the point of this post. Videos by their very nature are quite large, some being 10GB, 20GB or larger. So far the longest video, which is over two and a half hours viewing time comes in at 61GB. That's a huge file. The question is how does uploading such a large video file impact other people on the home network.

The first thing to keep in mind is different people on the home network are generally using different devices and could be using different applications. People can have NBN plans that are up to 100Mbps in terms of downloads and 20Mbps in terms of uploads. Notice how the upload speed is lower than the download speed.

The second thing to keep in mind is when you are watching a video (which is downloading), there's also uploading occuring. In general this is about 85% downloads and 15% uploads. So really having the download speed at about 5 times the upload speed is a good ratio.

The third thing to keep in mind is when you are uploading videos the upload speed is more important as there's much less downloading going on.

The forth thing to keep in mind is each of your devices only consider it's own needs. They don't consider the needs of anyone else on the local network.

If all people in the house are watching streaming videos they're all using a similar ratio of downloads to uploads. Let's take Netflix for example. Netflix recommends around 3Mbps for standard definition movies and 5Mbps for high definition. If we estimate upload speeds for back traffic at around 20%, that's the same ratio as our NBN internet services back traffic (uploads) would not overwhelm the watching of videos (downloads) until there were up to 20 users in theory, but less in practice.

Browsing the internet, general email and other activities use quite low amounts of traffic, so people using these applications would often not see any impact.

However, what happens in my situation where one user is uploading videos to their YouTube site. In theory a single computer on a network performing uploads could consume almost the entire upload capacity (which is also true for file downloading from a fast site) and that is what does happen.

In this case a single computer performing an upload to YouTube caused a person watching Netflix to have their video pausing on an annoyingly regular basis. The watching experience was interrupted regularly, perhaps even every 20 seconds. In effect the one computer performing an upload can impact every person on the home network and this is very noticeable when someone is watching a video over the internet. This was on an NBN service rated at 100Mbps with an upload speed of 20Mbps.

It's important to understand how the usage of the people in your home may be affecting each other. Poor performance of a service may not be because of the service itself, but by others in your home. There are many services that allow people to include videos in their online presence such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc., and if one person in your home is posting a video, they can have an impact on everyone else. That's not really a problem if people know what's going on as they can work together to make sure their activities don't affect each other. However it can be a problem when you don't know what's going on and pay for higher levels of service that don't perform any better.

As an extreme example, the bike trail ride of the Main Yarra Trail is around two and a half hours viewing time and 61GB in size. With a 100Mbps NBN plan you get an upload speed of 20Mbps. Assuming you had the upload run at full speed, the 61GB file would take six and three quarter hours. During that time anyone else using the internet could find significant delays, with the most noticeable affect being for those watching streaming on demand.

Hopefully by understanding a little more about what is happening when you're using the internet in your home this makes it easier, less frustrating and perhaps less expensive.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au