Free Tool

Polling Bandwidth Calculator

Estimate the bandwidth cost of polling a fleet of agents at different intervals. Compare fixed-interval polling (what most RMM tools do) against adaptive polling (what PWA does) at your scale.

Fleet size 500 10 – 10,000 hosts

Fixed poll interval 30s 10s – 600s

Idle fraction 70% % of fleet typically idle

Empty poll size 600 B HTTP overhead + tiny JSON

Heartbeat size 2000 B Vitals payload per heartbeat (60s)

How the math works

Fixed polling: every host polls at the same interval, regardless of activity. Total = hosts × (60s / interval) × payload bytes per minute.

Adaptive polling: active hosts stay at the fast interval, idle hosts step down to 60s, then 2m, then 5m, then 10m. The simulator assumes idle hosts spend most of their time at the slowest tier (10m), so they only emit ~6 empty polls per hour. Active hosts behave like fixed.

Heartbeat traffic is the same in both modes — every host sends a structured vitals payload every 60 seconds independent of polling.

Rule of thumb: if 70% of your hosts sit idle most of the day (which is typical for workstations), adaptive polling cuts poll traffic by ~85–90% with zero impact on responsiveness when work is dispatched.

PWA implements adaptive polling out of the box — no config required. See how →