I’m a big supporter of video sites like youtube and teachertube for education. It’s always been a curiosity as to what kind of bandwidth does it use up though and we regularly deal with complaints about slow internet. Internet can be thought of like the water utility. If everyone in your apartment building is trying to take a shower at the same time you’ll see reduced water pressure. Same for internet.
A recent upgrade to our router gives a new numeric representation of network bandwidth use along with a dynamic graph. I found when I started a youtube video it quickly rose to 8 MBits/sec and stayed above 2 MBits/sec for the early part of the video. It dropped off after that but I’m not sure if that is just the tool or youtube is lighter after you’ve started it. The later makes a little sense as it is being buffered instead of just streaming.
I’m .54 in the graphic above while using youtube and you can see that I’m using the most bandwidth in the building by far. The moral of the story is that internet bandwidth is something to be conserved. If you are using it for educational and work purposes then use it. Just keep in mind your colleagues and students need to use it too when you are tempted to watch that link to last night’s hockey highlights someone sent to you via email!