Teams Meeting Bandwidth Requirements
Students, faculty, and staff can review this guide to see the typical bandwidth requirements of a Microsoft Teams meeting. These tests were conducted by the Technology Support Center and do not constitute the exact requirements of the Teams application, but rather repeated results obtained on Windows computers running the Teams App in June of 2026.
To provide reference to the following numbers, you should run an internet speed test on the device you use to conduct Teams meetings and in the location in your building you call usually sit in. Speedtest by Ookla is a non-UConn speed test website that you can use, but many others are available.
You can think of bandwidth as a single water-pipe that connects your house to the Internet. All the internet traffic (water) that goes to and from your house must run through that same pipe simultaneously, and you are limited by the diameter of that pipe. Even if you use a VPN to connect to UCONN-SECURE, you are still using your pipe to connect to that VPN.
The result from your speed test that you should focus on is your upload speed. Home (in contrast to a workplace) upload speed is often dwarfed by download speed. Therefore, it is more common to have a sub-optimal upload speed. In the case of Teams, your “upload” is the act of sending your voice and camera feed, along with your option of sharing your screen, into the Teams call. Your “download” is the receiving of everyone else’s voice and video, along with any shared content.
You may find that your internet speed test is reporting >100 Mbps. Please note that many results in the table below are <1 Mbps.
Bandwidth Requirements Mbps (June 2026):
Scenario | Bandwidth Used in a One-on-One Meeting in Mbps (upload and download are equal) | Download Bandwidth Used in a 4 participant Meeting in Mbps (upload is the same as One-on-One) | Download Bandwidth Used in a large Meeting in Mbps 20 Participants with video and video screenshare (upload is the same as One-on-One) |
|---|---|---|---|
voice only | 0.015 | 0.02 |
|
voice and video | 0.5 | 0.5 | |
voice, video and sharing content | 0.6 | 0.6 |
The usage shown above is consumed by Teams alone. If you have other devices in your house also using an internet connection, the available bandwidth to your computer will be decreased. Every device in your house must share the bandwidth available to your house.
The use of Breakout Sessions will not increase the bandwidth requirements. Breakout Sessions are handled on the Teams server (call manager) side. However, joining a breakout sessions will temporarily lower your bandwidth requirement since you are now connected to less users (a portion of the total participants are in your breakout session). See the above table to estimate how the bandwidth usage will change.
Officially Stated Requirements from Microsoft
The following bandwidth requirements were transcribed from the Microsoft Learn.
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