How Much Data Does Zoom Consume? – How much data does a Zoom call use?
Chad Riland Program Manager, Innovation. Vikas Sarawat. Faculty and staff hosts who record Zoom sessions can take advantage of Pre cloud recording option. Click Video in the left-hand menu. Zoom Training. App B consistently consumed less bandwidth regardless of scenario.
May 06, · Key Observations. A. Data Consumption Varies: The first takeaway is that different apps consume different amounts of bandwidth, as shown in Table 1, from GBytes per hour up to GBytes per hour, for video conferences using the different laptops, the same broadband connections, the same general setup (e.g., gallery view), the same people doing . For 1 hour call ( seconds): 2 x = Mbits / 8 = Mbytes (MB) per hour (or more) So, on average, Zoom uses roughly MB of data every hour. This is a reliable estimate for both one-on-one video and conference calls hosting several users. Jan 25, · For a Zoom meeting, you spend somewhere between MB and GB per hour, or somewhere between 9 MB and 27 MB per minute, depending upon the streaming quality. Zoom data usage for a group call The more people you have in a Zoom call, the more data you’ll use up to run the meeting.
As video conference applications have become an integral part of our daily lives, we wanted to not only better understand the bandwidth usage as previously explored, but also the total data consumption of these applications.
This investigation provides a first step in better understanding that latter dimension. To avoid any appearance of endorsement of a particular conferencing application, we have not labeled the figures below with the specific apps under test. In short, we observed that a single user on a video conferencing application consumed roughly one gigabyte per hour, which compares to about three gigabytes per hour when streaming an HD movie or other video. However, we did observe substantial variance in video conferencing app hourly data consumption based on the specific app and end-user device.
Much like our prior work on bandwidth usage, the test setup used typical settings and looked at both upstream and downstream data consumption from laptops connected to a cable broadband internet service. We used the same network equipment from November and our more recent blog post in February.
The cable network was configured to provide 50 Mbps downstream and five Mbps upstream broadband service, overprovisioned by 25 percent. For all 10 participants, cameras and microphones were on. Conference applications were set to «gallery mode» with thumbnails of each person filling the screen, no slides were presented and the video conference sessions just included people talking.
The laptop under test used a wired connection to the cable modem to ensure that no variables outside the control of the service provider would impact broadband performance. Most notably, by using a wired connection, we removed the variable of Wi-Fi performance from our test setup. During data collection, the conference app was the only app open on the laptop under test. Video conferencing sessions were set up and data consumption was measured over time.
We collected 10 minutes of data for each conferencing session under test to calculate the total consumption for one hour.
The charts below show the data consumed for each of the 10 minutes of the conference session. During the conference there was movement and discussion to keep the video and audio streams active throughout the period of data collection.
For each test scenario, only one laptop was connected at a time to the broadband connection under test. Our goal was to measure the data consumption of one conferencing user on the broadband connection.
The other conference participants were on the internet; they were not in the lab. Once again, we used TShark a popular, widely used network protocol analyzer to capture and measure the data.
For the laptop under test, we chose two that have quite different capabilities. The first was a low-cost laptop with an inch screen, like the ones students are often provided by school districts for at-home learning. The second was a higher-cost laptop with a inch screen, like what we often see in an enterprise environment.
Note the two laptops not only have quite different hardware components e. Once again, to avoid any appearance of endorsement, we are not identifying the specific laptops used. Table 1 shows hourly bandwidth consumption combining both upstream and downstream for the laptop under test, normalized to Gigabytes per hour.
The table provides the data consumption for the low-cost and higher-cost laptops in each scenario with the four conferencing applications. The following figures show the data consumption, in Megabytes, for each minute of the minute data collection for each of the permutations of our testing.
Figure 2 shows data consumed each minute for each of the four apps when using the higher-cost laptop was in the person meetings. Figure 3 shows the data consumed each minute using App A and compares the two laptops used for data collection. For each minute, the bar to the left is the lower-cost laptop and the bar to the right is the higher-cost laptop. Figure 4 shows the data consumed each minute using App B and compares the two laptops. The bar to the left is the lower-cost laptop and the bar to the right is the higher-cost laptop.
Figure 5 shows the data consumed each minute using App C and compares the two laptops. As more workplaces offer opportunities to work from home, Zoom has become one of the go-to tools to meet with coworkers remotely. The downside of Zoom is that you need to have a sufficient amount of internet data in order for your Zoom sessions to run smoothly. This article discusses how much data a Zoom call actually consumes.
Between MB and 1. This amounts to between 9MB and 27MB of data that may be used per minute for one-to-one Zoom meetings. How do you lower your bandwidth usage on Zoom? How much data does Zoom use? Find an internet plan with more data so you can Zoom in peace. One-on-one calls. Zoom settings. Group calls.
Audio-only VoIP and screen sharing. Sharing your screen in a Zoom videoconference call will also take only a small amount of data. Switch off your video completely. Pro tip. Use Google Docs or an app like it instead of sharing your screen. Call into your Zoom meeting by phone. To avoid using any data at all, call into a Zoom meeting over the phone.
Get more data. Use your zip code to find satellite internet providers near you. Think of it this way: Data is information you consume on the internet. Bandwidth is the capacity you have to consume that information.
Zoom uses an average of MB of data per hour. Find all your internet provider options with one search. Sources 1. Written by. Read More. About Us. Internet Service.
