Network Requirements

Network Requirements

SSH and the API work fine on almost any connection. The numbers below are for Browser Desktop — the interactive remote screen (1080p, up to 60 fps) — where connection quality directly translates into how smooth the desktop feels.

Recommended Connection

• Minimum: 10 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up — works, but background downloads on your network may cause stutters.
• Recommended: 25+ Mbps down / 5 Mbps up — enough headroom that video peaks and other traffic never compete.
• Latency: under 100 ms round-trip to your server region is comfortable; under 50 ms feels local.

Stability Beats Speed

A stable 25 Mbps line gives a better desktop than an unstable 500 Mbps one. The stream adapts its bitrate in real time, so raw bandwidth is rarely the bottleneck — jitter and packet loss are. Three things make the biggest difference:

• Use wired Ethernet or 5 GHz Wi-Fi near your router. Crowded 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi is the single most common cause of a choppy remote desktop.
• Keep packet loss under ~3%. The stream includes forward error correction and recovers from occasional loss automatically, but sustained loss degrades any real-time video.
• Avoid saturating your uplink (large uploads, cloud backups) during a session — a full router queue adds hundreds of milliseconds of lag even on fast plans.

If the Desktop Feels Slow

Browser Desktop measures your connection continuously and will show a banner when your network — not the Mac — is the bottleneck. Quick checklist: switch to a wired connection or 5 GHz Wi-Fi, pause large uploads/downloads, close VPNs you don't need (they often add latency and loss), and re-test. The 📊 Stats button in the session toolbar shows live RTT, fps, and packet loss.

Our servers sit on wired symmetric fiber with capacity reserved per tenant, so the server side is engineered out of the equation — if quality drops, it is almost always the path between your device and the region.