What a connected future may look like
From smart TVs to tablets, and everything in between, the number of household devices connected to the internet is rising.
It wasn’t that long ago that the only connected device for many households was a modem.
That has changed significantly over the last two decades and now, many homes have more connected devices than we even realise.
As well as phones, tablets and computers, we are being sold more connected items such as fridges, heaters and even lights to help us manage our day-to-day lives.
A report released by technology research company Telsyte has found that the average Australian household will have 24 connected devices by 2019 – a three-fold increase from 2014.
Other analysts have forecast there could be as many as five billion worldwide devices connected to the internet by the end of this year.
By 2020, we could be looking at 25 billion devices or three for every person on the planet.
With this increase in connected devices, the key question becomes; how will this impact our speeds in the home?
Will we get to the point where we have too many devices connected to our personal networks?
How many is too many?
- It has been suggested that most internet access points and routers could theoretically+ have up to have 255 devices connected at a time.
- This obviously represents more devices than a person could use in a day, and far exceeds the needs of the typical home. Just because it’s possible to connect 255 devices to a single router or access point, doesn’t mean you should.
- A key point to understand is that for each new computer or device added to the network, the lower the bandwidth for the other devices using the same internet connection.
- While this will not be a problem for the majority of people, as a general rule of thumb, it is best to limit the number of simultaneous connections on your home network to 45++.
- This sounds like an absurd number of devices but if you take into consideration the devices a family might already have connected at one time, this number begins to look a little inadequate.
An example of a connected Australian family
Hypothetically, if you were to consider the devices a family of four with two adults and two teenagers might have in the home, the list could look like this:
- Four mobile phones
- Two tablets
- A laptop for school for each child and a work laptop
- Two smart TVs
- Connected Blu-ray player
- Home PC
- Gaming console
- Foxtel box
- Security system
The list already has 16 gadgets connected to the internet. With the emergence of the internet of things for example, adding other connected devices like your lights, doorbell camera and your air-conditioning will have you pushing 24 devicesas predicted by the Telsyte report..
New internet speed for a new world
As the world around us, and how we engage begins to shift to be more connected, we will continue to expect more from our devices. Along with this comes the need for greater bandwidth and network speeds in order to run those devices concurrently.
This means that households will require greater bandwidth and consistency from internet packages. It is worthwhile chatting to your ISP to find out more about what package best suits you and when you can connect to services over the nbn™ network.