What is the approximate bandwidth required for a 1080p HD Netflix stream?
- A approximately 50 Mbps
- B approximately 100 Kbps
- C approximately 1 Gbps
- D approximately 5 Mbps
Streaming high-definition video is a highly optimized process. For a standard 1080p stream, services like Netflix use advanced compression to deliver a high-quality image using only about 5 Megabits per second (Mbps). If you upgrade to 4K Ultra-HD, the bandwidth requirement jumps to about 15-25 Mbps. For a system designer, these numbers are critical: if you have 1 Million concurrent users watching 1080p video, your backbone network must be able to move 5 Terabits of data every single second. Comparing these numbers to text (where 5 Mbps could send the complete works of Shakespeare thrice over) highlights why video is the dominant consumer of global internet bandwidth.
One system design question a day, with spaced repetition so the ones you miss come back.
Get the appRelated questions
- What is the maximum allowed downtime per year for a system targeting '99.9%' (Three Nines) availability?
- What is the typical size of a standard ASCII character (e.g., 'A')?
- What is the typical Round Trip Time (RTT) for a single network packet traveling between New York and London (Transatlantic)?
- Network bandwidth is usually denoted in **bits** per second (Gbps), while storage is in **Bytes** (GB). What is the conversion ratio?
- Storing a password using a secure algorithm like bcrypt (cost 10) or Argon2 typically consumes how much storage per user?
- How much power does a typical fully-loaded rack-mount server consume?