The Remote Worker's Guide to Home Internet

Working from home puts your internet connection to a different kind of test than streaming or browsing. Here is what actually matters for a reliable home office, and why the upload number on your plan might be more important than the download.

Upload Speed Is Your Bottleneck

When you join a Zoom call, your computer is simultaneously downloading everyone else's video and uploading yours. On a typical cable plan with 200 Mbps download but only 10 Mbps upload, the download side is fine. The upload side is doing all the heavy lifting.

A single high-quality video call needs 3-8 Mbps upload. If your spouse is also on a call, that is 6-16 Mbps upload, already exceeding many cable plans. Add a cloud backup running in the background and the math stops working quickly. This is why remote workers overwhelmingly prefer fiber's symmetrical speeds.

VPN Performance

Corporate VPNs encrypt all your traffic and route it through your company's servers. This adds latency (typically 20-50 ms) and reduces throughput. On a connection with already-high latency like DSL (50-100 ms base), VPN can make applications feel sluggish. Fiber's base latency of 10-15 ms gives you more room before the VPN overhead becomes noticeable.

Recommended Setup for a Home Office

• Internet plan: 300-500 Mbps symmetrical fiber covers one or two people working from home comfortably, with headroom for the rest of the household.
• Router placement: Position your router as close to your home office as possible. WiFi signal degrades through walls. If your office is far from the router, consider a wired Ethernet connection or a mesh WiFi system.
• Wired connection: For critical video calls, plug your laptop directly into your router with an Ethernet cable. WiFi is convenient but Ethernet is more reliable.
• Backup plan: Keep your phone's hotspot ready. If your internet has a brief outage during a presentation, you can switch to mobile data in seconds.

Dealing with the Whole-Household Problem

The remote work challenge is not just your needs in isolation. It is your video call competing with your kids' online homework, your partner's streaming, and every smart device in the house. Fiber solves this with two advantages: more total bandwidth and no shared neighborhood node. Your speed does not drop when your neighbors come online in the evening.

Bottom Line

For remote work, prioritize upload speed, low latency, and reliability over raw download speed. Fiber delivers all three. A 500 Mbps symmetrical plan from Frontier gives a two-person home office everything it needs with room to spare.