Netflix recommends a stable 15 megabits per second to play a show in 4K, and YouTube puts its own 4K figure at 20. NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW needs 25 megabits to stream a game at 1080p and 60 frames per second, and it adds a condition that has nothing to do with bandwidth: less than 80 milliseconds of delay between your device and one of its data centres.
Those are figures for a single stream, and they look small beside the target the CRTC set for Canadian homes and businesses in December 2016: 50 Mbps down, 10 up and the option of unlimited data. The CRTC’s broadband page, last updated in March, puts that level of service within reach of 95.8% of Canadian households, but of only 80.5% of households in rural communities.
So for most readers the number on the plan is not the real question. What decides whether a picture holds and a game responds is what the busiest hour in the house adds up to, what the line delivers on a winter evening, and how quickly it answers once it is busy. One kind of online game, the live casino table, needs a steady picture and a quick answer at the same time.
What the streaming services ask for
Streaming services publish their own speed guidance, and it is modest. Netflix, YouTube and Prime Video put HD between 2.5 and 5 Mbps, Prime Video sets its floor for standard definition at 1, and YouTube’s figure for a 360p picture is lower still, under one megabit per second.
Two of the three link picture quality to the line itself. Prime Video says it serves the highest quality it can on the bandwidth available, while Netflix tells viewers whose provider limits their speed to change the video quality setting for a steadier connection or to fix buffering.
Cloud gaming services publish figures too, and set beside the video services they sit in a different bracket:
|
Service |
Picture |
Speed the service gives |
How the service words it |
|
Netflix |
HD, 720p |
3 Mbps |
Recommended, or higher |
|
Netflix |
Ultra HD, 4K |
15 Mbps |
Recommended, or higher |
|
YouTube |
HD, 1080p |
5 Mbps |
Recommended sustained speed |
|
YouTube |
Ultra HD, 4K |
20 Mbps |
Recommended sustained speed |
|
Prime Video |
HD |
5 Mbps |
Recommended minimum download speed |
|
PlayStation Plus cloud streaming |
Full HD, 1080p |
23 Mbps |
Recommended |
|
PlayStation Plus cloud streaming |
4K |
52 Mbps |
Recommended |
|
GeForce NOW |
1080p at 60 frames per second |
25 Mbps |
Requirement, with under 80 ms of latency |
|
GeForce NOW |
4K at 120 frames per second |
45 Mbps |
Requirement, with under 80 ms of latency |
Games are judged in milliseconds
At 4K, the two cloud services in the table ask for three to three and a half times what Netflix does, and bandwidth is only part of what they need. A film can be downloaded ahead of the moment you watch it, but a streamed game’s next frame depends on the button you press next, so there is nothing to fetch in advance and delay on the line shows up on the screen.
That is why the cloud services set conditions a video service doesn’t. Beside NVIDIA’s 80-millisecond limit, Sony asks for at least 5 Mbps of upload as well as download just to open a session, and Microsoft says Xbox Cloud Gaming sets resolution, bitrate and frame rate partly by the quality of the connection, which it describes in terms of ping, packet loss and jitter.
Research on cloud gaming puts a number on that delay. In a 2014 study at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, every 100 milliseconds of latency cost players of cloud-streamed games about a quarter of their performance, in tests on both a commercial service and an academic one.
A game installed on a console or PC flips the problem. Its heavy transfer is the download, and Sony notes that downloads of big-budget games often exceed 100 GB. On a line delivering a full 50 Mbps, 100 GB takes about four and a half hours to arrive; at 500 it takes under half an hour. For installed games, extra megabits buy shorter waits, while the delay during play is a separate number.
Add up the busiest hour, then take off the evening
A plan has to carry everything that runs at once, not just the biggest single stream. On the services’ own figures, two 4K Netflix streams and one GeForce NOW session at 1080p and 60 frames per second add up to 55 Mbps, 5 more than the CRTC’s target.
Then there is what a line delivers at the hour it is needed. When a study for the CRTC and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada measured 42 test units in homes on fixed wireless plans rated at 50/10 or faster, between January 15 and February 13, 2024, peak-hour downloads from 7 to 11 p.m. averaged 2 megabits below the 50 Mbps threshold, and 57% of peak-hour tests came in under it. In snow, peak-time downloads fell to 40 megabits per second.
Upload thinned out as well. During snowfall it averaged 7.4 Mbps at peak, short of the 10 in the target, which still covers Sony’s minimum for one cloud session but not for two. On those averages, the household above would have come up 15 megabits short on a snowy evening, on the download side alone.
The delay that appears when the line is busy
Speed was not the only thing the CRTC measured. On an idle connection, latency across its fixed wireless panel averaged 37 milliseconds, rising to 39 at peak. With a large download running, peak latency climbed to about 174 milliseconds, and during an upload it reached 415. The report calls this latency under load, also known as buffer bloat, and treats it as more representative of real use than the idle figure.
For play, that is the number that matters. The 174 milliseconds measured under a download is more than twice GeForce NOW’s 80-millisecond ceiling, and the CRTC’s report says users typically notice latency problems more prominently at higher values, giving over 100 milliseconds as its example. A line can pass a morning speed test and still stutter at 9 p.m. when someone else in the house starts a download.
Measuring your own line takes three passes. Start with a wired device, then repeat on the same device over Wi-Fi. This site’s guide to troubleshooting a slow internet connection begins the same way, and it reads a wired result that matches the plan as a sign that the problem is likely the Wi-Fi.
Then run the tests again in the evening. Netflix points phone and computer users to Fast.com and builds a Check your Network test into its apps on TVs and TV devices. Finally, test once more while a large download runs, and watch whether the ping climbs toward the numbers the CRTC recorded.
Dealer tables are a stream you play in
Live casino games sit where the two halves of this question meet. Evolution, one of the studios behind online casinos’ dealer tables, says the action is live-streamed in HD video to a phone, tablet or computer, and that its software lets players place bets, make decisions and chat with the dealer through an interface that is part of the live game on screen. A dealer table is a video stream in which the viewer also has to act.
Here the supplier’s own numbers run out. Evolution’s player explainer describes the video as HD but gives no speed figure for it, and its company history credits what it calls emergency mode, which “kept games running when bandwidth dropped by shrinking the video and expanding the interface”. A speed test can’t show how one casino’s tables will hold up on a strained line, since it measures the route to a test server, so the nearest thing to a real test is that casino’s own site, on your connection, at the hour you would play.
That leaves one question before any money goes in: which casinos let a new account play without a deposit, and on what terms, since a headline spin count can sit on a deposit bundle too. Outside Ontario, a search for a free cash bonus no deposit casino Canada players can sign up with can begin at BonusFinder Canada’s page on 120-spin offers, which separates true no-deposit offers from deposit bundles and gives the wagering, maximum cashout and slot for each casino in its comparison table.
The page itself names testing a casino before paying as one use for these offers. The no-deposit offers it lists come as spins on a named slot rather than cash, so they test the casino’s site and game software on your line, not a dealer’s table. The feed is a separate check: Evolution’s explainer says you can learn by just watching its live games in progress, but whether a casino opens its tables to an account that hasn’t deposited is that casino’s own rule.
Seen from outside Ontario, the page’s comparison table gives a Curaçao licence for each of its five casinos, an international licence rather than a provincial one. Readers in Ontario see different listings: BonusFinder Canada says it can’t advertise casino bonuses to Ontario visitors because of local regulations, and that it shows them only casinos licensed in Ontario.
Casino play is for adults only: 19 and over in most provinces, 18 in Quebec, Manitoba and Alberta. Set a spending limit before any deposit, not after a good session. If play starts to cause harm, help is provincial and open around the clock. In British Columbia it is the Gambling Support BC Line, reachable on 1-888-795-6111. Alberta’s 24/7 Addiction Helpline handles gambling calls as well, on 1-866-332-2322. Saskatchewan’s Problem Gambling Help Line answers on 1-800-306-6789, Manitoba’s Problem Gambling Helpline uses 1-800-463-1554 and ConnexOntario takes Ontario’s calls on 1-866-531-2600.
Fix the house before buying more speed
What to change depends on which test fell short. When only the Wi-Fi pass lagged, the services say where to start: NVIDIA recommends a hardwired Ethernet connection or a router with 5 GHz Wi-Fi for its cloud games, and YouTube says it may help to hardwire the connection instead of using wireless.
If the ping climbs only when the line is busy, a faster plan may not cure it, because that delay builds up in queues rather than from a shortage of speed. The Internet Engineering Task Force’s document on FQ-CoDel, a queue-management algorithm for routers, describes it as “a powerful tool for fighting bufferbloat and reducing latency“, and the algorithm is already part of the mainline Linux kernel. Before paying for a faster tier, ask whether a router’s firmware manages its queues that way.
If wired tests in the evening fall short of what the busiest hour adds up to, the plan or the technology behind it is the limit, and that is the case for a faster tier or a different kind of line. The same guide on this site recommends documenting speed tests and modem signals before contacting the provider, which turns a complaint about lag into numbers a support desk can check.