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+# Bandwidth Requirements
+
+## On Production Systems, Standalone Netdata
+
+Standalone Netdata may use network bandwidth under the following conditions:
+
+1. You configured data collection jobs that are fetching data from remote systems. There is no such jobs enabled by default.
+2. You use the dashboard of the Netdata.
+3. [Netdata Cloud communication](#netdata-cloud-communication) (see below).
+
+## On Metrics Centralization Points, between Netdata Children & Parents
+
+Netdata supports multiple compression algorithms for streaming communication. Netdata Children offer all their compression algorithms when connecting to a Netdata Parent, and the Netdata Parent decides which one to use based on algorithms availability and user configuration.
+
+| Algorithm |                                                              Best for                                                               |
+|:---------:|:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:|
+|  `zstd`   |                      The best balance between CPU utilization and compression efficiency. This is the default.                      |
+|   `lz4`   |                   The fastest of the algorithms. Use this when CPU utilization is more important than bandwidth.                    |
+|  `gzip`   | The best compression efficiency, at the expense of CPU utilization. Use this when bandwidth is more important than CPU utilization. |
+| `brotli`  |                                  The most CPU intensive algorithm, providing the best compression.                                  |
+
+The expected bandwidth consumption using `zstd` for 1 million samples per second is 84 Mbps, or 10.5 MiB/s.
+
+The order compression algorithms is selected is configured in `stream.conf`, per `[API KEY]`, like this:
+
+```
+    compression algorithms order = zstd lz4 brotli gzip
+```
+
+The first available algorithm on both the Netdata Child and the Netdata Parent, from left to right, is chosen.
+
+Compression can also be disabled in `stream.conf` at either Netdata Children or Netdata Parents.
+
+## Netdata Cloud Communication
+
+When Netdata Agents connect to Netdata Cloud, they communicate metadata of the metrics being collected, but they do not stream the samples collected for each metric.
+
+The information transferred to Netdata Cloud is:
+
+1. Information and **metadata about the system itself**, like its hostname, architecture, virtualization technologies used and generally labels associated with the system.
+2. Information about the **running data collection plugins, modules and jobs**.
+3. Information about the **metrics available and their retention**.
+4. Information about the **configured alerts and their transitions**.
+
+This is not a constant stream of information. Netdata Agents update Netdata Cloud only about status changes on all the above (e.g. an alert being triggered, or a metric stopped being collected). So, there is an initial handshake and exchange of information when Netdata starts, and then there only updates when required.
+
+Of course, when you view Netdata Cloud dashboards that need to query the database a Netdata agent maintains, this query is forwarded to an agent that can satisfy it. This means that Netdata Cloud receives metric samples only when a user is accessing a dashboard and the samples transferred are usually aggregations to allow rendering the dashboards.