Warranted Environment Specification (WES) - Network and Bandwidth Requirements

Training & Knowledge Updated by Training & Knowledge

Published: 6th October 2026 | Reviewed: 6th October 2026

Network and Bandwidth requirements

The Docman 10 network requirements have been calculated based on the sizes and volumes of documents processed in the live service by 10 GP practices selected at random. Based upon this analysis, our recommendation would be to have a HSCN network link, a HSCNI network link, or a SWAN network link in Scotland, that has speeds of 15 Mbps Upload and 15 Mbps Download. Whilst link speeds below this, down to the minimum shown below will work, the response times of the system will be degraded, and system performance overall will not be optimum.

 

Upload Speed 

Download Speed 

Minimum 

5 Mbps 

5 Mbps 

Recommended 

15 Mbps 

15 Mbps 

Optimum 

50 Mbps 

50 Mbps 

The 10 practices processed 5.3 million documents, and most were small, with half under 54 KB and 99 in 100 under 3 MB. 

Measure 

Document Size 

Typical (median) document size 

53.9 KB 

Average (mean) document size 

227.5 KB 

90th percentile (1 in 10 larger) 

466.8 KB 

95th percentile 

865.9 KB 

99th percentile (1 in 100 larger) 

2.72 MB 

Percentile values are estimated from each practice's median and mean document size. The Minimum, Recommended and Optimum speeds are set so that 99 in 100 documents, in every practice sampled, transfer within 10 seconds at Minimum, 3 seconds at Recommended and 1 second at Optimum. 

The expected time taken to transfer a document at each speed is shown below. 

Speed (each direction) 

Typical document size (~54 KB) 

1 MB document size 

5 MB document size 

10 MB document size (upload limit) 

Minimum (5 Mbps) 

0.09 s 

1.7 s 

8.4 s 

16.8 s 

Recommended (15 Mbps) 

0.03 s 

0.6 s 

2.8 s 

5.6 s 

Optimum (50 Mbps) 

0.01 s 

0.2 s 

0.8 s 

1.7 s 

These times assume the full link speed is available to the transfer, and actual times will typically be 10–25% longer due to protocol overhead and latency. Docman 10 has no upload timeout, so large uploads on slower links will complete, but slowly. 

The table below shows how the HSCN connectivity options for GP sites align with these speeds. 

HSCN technology 

Upload speed (theoretical max) 

Speed met 

Supported 

ADSL 

832 kbps 

Below Minimum 

No 

ADSL2+ 

1.4 Mbps 

Below Minimum 

No 

Cable (DOCSIS) 

2 / 6 / 12 / 20 Mbps 

Below Minimum / Minimum / Minimum / Recommended 

Yes (6 Mbps and above) 

4G LTE (typical) 

8 Mbps 

Minimum 

Yes 

FTTC 

10 / 15 / 20 Mbps 

Minimum / Recommended* / Recommended 

Yes 

Ethernet 

10 Mbps 

Minimum 

Yes 

FTTP 

165 / 220 Mbps 

Optimum 

Yes 

Ethernet 

100 Mbps 

Optimum 

Yes 

*Only where the delivered speed reaches 15 Mbps. Upload speeds shown are theoretical maximums, and delivered speeds, particularly on copper-based broadband, are typically lower. 

These figures are a guideline only as system performance is also dependent upon several other factors outside the control of the Docman 10 software e.g. large file transfers, local LAN traffic / network profiles, HSCN network traffic and user activities that impact on network usage. 

The Docman service(s) are hosted in cloud infrastructure which is connected to the HSCN Networks. The IP addresses for the service(s) are resolved to the active IP address via DNS. To be able to access the hosted Docman service(s), customers must ensure their network gateways permit HTTPS (port 443) to the following IP Ranges. ​

Updated on 6th October 2026

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Warranted Environment Specification (WES)

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