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I think people tend to overestimate how much bandwidth they use. Pandora and other services stream audio at something like 256kbps. And for most people who aren't audiophiles, that's a high-quality stream. Uncompressed CD Audio is something like 1.5mbps.

Netflix serves up 1080p video at around 4-6mbps. Just for fun, lets round that up to 10mbps per stream, you're talking about being able to handle 50 simultaneous streams at 500mbps.

And really, you're only serving one stream outbound to your video chat service, assuming something like Twitch or whatever. And that always gets compressed to hell. Not to mention, most webcams aren't going to serve up Netflix-quality video, so there's not even a point to trying to use that much bandwidth from the incoming feeds.



Latency probably matters more than bandwidth in a case like this.

Gotta pay for the direct-fibre for the ping as much as the volume.

Congestion is gonna mean you always need slack. There must be unused bandwidth or the occasional packet-loss just cascades.




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