What's more important, ping or download speed?

ℹ️ Support 💬 Talk (spreed)
1

Hey,

I am managing a location that has a pretty bad internet connection via dsl. Using Ubiquiti UniFi Access Points. Also using the high performance backened from www.struktur.de Usually we get something like (on a laptop via wifi):
ping 26ms
down 8Mbps
up 1,7mbps

The connection was pretty bad for Talk, videochat was stuttering and sharing a screen only shows a black screen after a few minutes. So I decided to try internet via mobile connection (LTE = 4G). The stats are usually something like (on a laptop via wifi):
ping 139
up 27
down 6,2

(wired connection to LTE router)
ping 38
up 33
down 9

My questions:

  • what’s more important for a good Talk experience, ping or up/download speed?
  • what is an acceptable range for ping/up/down to get a good Talk experience?

Thanks for reading =)

2

A simple answer: ping is more important since it (approximately) reflects latency.
But this assumes you have what today is called fast internet access (measured in Mbps).

A much more realistic answer - it depends. On many factors. Here are few of them:

  • how many people in a conference (two or more)… different tech used…
  • where do participants come from (home? from behind routers?)…
  • home WiFi has often very variable speeds (high jitter); LTE even more so…

According to Cisco latency should be no more than 150ms. I’d say it should be double-digit…

A few (reliable!) Mbps bandwidth both ways should be enough for videoconferencing with a signaling server like HPB struktur.de as a backend…