We can have 5 people sharing a 600 mbps internet service with two people streaming Hulu while two people do web video conferencing without missing a beat ... after I installed the Ethernet bridge between the wifi mesh nodes (with Ethernet cables strung through the house connecting 3 child nodes from the bridge with the 1 parent node). The nodes weren't connecting wirelessly, perhaps with all of the duct work in between the floors. And Ethernet connecting through a hub is fine when it's just the wife and me. But when other folks stay over, the bridge was needed to greatly reduce the network collisions, even though all of the child wi-fi nodes talk to just the parent node and not each other.
The only drawback is my internet service has gone down when the grid power went down about 5 times in the past 7 or 8 months, while the home had power. I'm tempted to sign up for Starlink for that alone.
What WiFi nodes are you using and how fast is the router?
If the nodes/switch/router are 1Gb Ethernet I don’t think that would be the contention. (Jumbo packets would help there, too, as you can transmit data in fewer packets.) if they’re somehow on 100mb Ethernet that’s your bottleneck.
WiFi also depends on what you’re using. If you’re using a typical 2.4/5g band WiFi especially 802.11ac or higher I’d think that’d be enough to handle 5 people gracefully. I’d google for optimal advanced wifi settings for your router, too. Some of the default settings will slow things down for max compatibility and you might have QoS turned on (or you might want to turn it on)
> internet service has gone down when the grid power went down about 5 times in the past 7 or 8 months
Around here, T-Mobile fixed base backup service is $20 a month.
I think Starlink has articulated their prices quite a bit too, but not that low.