How much bandwidth is required for programming (remotely)? | Hacker News Reader

How much bandwidth is required for programming (remotely)?

5 pointsanupshinde5 comments

Note that this isn't about latency - assume that it is good enough.

I work remotely (mostly from home) and have been doing it for approximately 3 years now. I started with a 2Mbps highly-reliable connection with a backup connectivity dongle. Then moved to a 12 Mbps connection with little less reliability (since I always had a backup). For some time I also tested a 20Mbps connection - but that did not feel anything different to my usage. Now I have a 4Mbps connection

While the higher-bandwidth paysoff when I watch youtube-HD video tutorials, download SDKs.

But if we consider more frequent tasks like reading online documentation, looking up stackoverflow, reading HN, or testing websites online - the bandwidth of 4Mbps feels "too much to have". I usually need to deploy to cloud environments, download code from these environments and test stuff online

* The speeds I mentioned above are downstream speeds, upstream speeds are lower- between 1Mbps and 2Mbps

How much bandwidth do you require to effectively work remotely?

I have a 50Mbps/5Mpbs connection that I upgraded to recently. I do have to download large code bases and upload large .war files, but I've noticed that it's not really my connection speed that's limiting. Often I'm on my work VPN or if I'm doing work on a customer site I'll be on their VPN. Most of the time, at least for me, the VPN severely limits my upload/download speeds.

Since that's the case, I'm considering downgrading my plan. YMMV, but my take home message is do what works for you and make sure that you are able to utilize all of your bandwidth if you go with a more expensive plan.

Also, what would be nice (for me) is if the upload speeds would match the download speeds. I would settle for a 5Mbps/5Mbps connection because more often than not upload speed is my bottleneck.

If you are coding remotely (e.g. ssh/nx into a linux box somewhere), then latency matters more than bandwidth. All of your BW numbers mentioned should work fine.

In my work, I tend to upload big jars (~55 MB) to servers/S3 frequently - without a good upload rate, that'd be basically out of the question (I know because I experience it when working from cafes with sucky connection) and I'd need to structure my project in a less convenient way.

If you can do your work remotely through a terminal, then you can get away with speeds slower than 1Mbps, even dial-up. If you need to do video chat via Skype of Google Hangouts, then you probably wouldn't want to go much slower than 1Mbps.

Pretty much this. Although when it comes to internet speeds I tend to get the the fastest i'm willing to pay for. There is nothing like fast internet.

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