Why symmetrical internet is better for your business

Symmetrical NBN for Business

If you are considering which internet package is best for your business, chances are you’ve come across a number of ‘techy’ terms that are completely new to you – symmetrical internet connection and asymmetrical internet connection will be among them.

Which option you choose will make a huge difference to how effectively your business operates, so it’s important to understand what asymmetrical and symmetrical internet are – and why symmetrical internet connection is the best option for most businesses.

Read on as we discuss the difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical internet, and show you our symmetrical NBN plans.

What are symmetrical and asymmetrical connections?

The terms symmetrical connection and asymmetrical connection simply refer to the speed of uploads and downloads.

Symmetrical connections provide internet connectivity with equal download and upload speeds, which is a good thing.

For example, if you have a 500/500 Mbps internet connection, your upload speed will be 500 Mbps and your download speed will be 500 MBps.

Asymmetrical connections typically have slower upload speeds compared to download speeds.

Sometimes a business will choose asymmetrical internet as a cost-saving measure, only to discover the minimal cost saving means that their internet connection doesn’t support how they need to connect to the internet.

This can cost your business valuable time and money, and slow down productivity.

Why a symmetrical connection is best for business connectivity

Waiting for documents to upload to the cloud is not just annoying, it can cause real issues for businesses.

Most of us understand that for businesses using the cloud, internet is a two-way proposition: users upload work onto the cloud and download work from the cloud, and we do this multiple times during the day.

Delays in being able to access documents can cause a real loss of productivity.

This is especially true if your business has people accessing work from the cloud from various locations, when at any time you may have a number of people waiting for the one document to upload.

What about businesses that need to upload video files to video hosting platforms like Youtube or Vimeo? You can be stuck there for hours waiting for the upload to complete.

Symmetrical internet is important if you have a number of employees using collaborative tools for particular projects, or if you are using applications from the cloud, such as Microsoft 365.

Symmetrical connections also eliminate those frustrating internet bottlenecks – those high traffic times when lack of available bandwidth can cause backlogs in uploads.

Importantly, symmetrical internet allows users to better engage in online video calls, the equal upload and download speeds delivering higher quality of video and audio.

So what is a good upload speed?

An average upload speed can be considered anything up to 60 Mbps. It is also useful to have a buffer of between 30-40% so that you don’t get stuck at the lower end of the upload speed spectrum. 

However for business, a good upload speed could be anything 100 Mbps and over. This speed would be good for a small team of around 10 people. 

If your business is larger than this, or relies on the internet a lot, consider an upload speed of 250 Mbps, 500 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps. 

Symmetrical connections take on significant importance for businesses using the cloud. Slow speeds can mean that the cloud is not able to be accessed as readily as you need it to be. With the cloud increasingly becoming a key element of business infrastructure, the ability to reliably and quickly access the cloud is crucial.

Enterprise Ethernet

Swoop Broadband offers symmetrical speeds up to 1 Gbps/1 Gbps, using nbn’s highest symmetrical speed product, Enterprise Ethernet.

Enterprise Ethernet is nbn’s premium business fibre product and was created to meet the needs of businesses running applications that are time sensitive and require consistent bandwidth, especially those that run on the cloud.

Enterprise Ethernet is highly adaptable and has been designed to change with business. It can be scaled according to increases in the number of employees, or the adoption of more bandwidth-heavy applications.

> Find out more about our Enterprise Ethernet business fibre internet here.

Still not sure which option is best for your business? Our team of experts can answer any questions you may have, and assist you in finding the very best internet option for your particular business.