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Web Hosting Data Transfer -- How much is too much ?
Bandwidth in its simplest terms refers to the amount of
data that flows across a network wire in a given time period.
For most web hosting providers, that time period is measured
in a month. Web hosting providers are charged a certain
amount per month or per year for an allocated amount of
bandwidth from backbone providers and wholesale data centers.
That cost is then passed on to the consumer in the form
of web hosting plans.
How much bandwidth will my website use?
With so much variation among web hosting companies, it
can sometimes be difficult to know how much bandwidth your
website will need. So, how much is a gigabyte of bandwidth
anyway? Let's put it in perspective. If an average web page,
images and all is 50 kilobytes in size, your website could
be viewed 20,000 times! For the average hobby website, that
is more than enough. Let's further put that 20,000 in perspective.
If each visitor to your website viewed an average of 4 pages
per month, it would still represent over 5,000 unique visitors
to your website every month.
Beware of bandwidth usage when offering file downloads
While offering simple web pages doesn't use up much bandwidth,
the same can't be said about downloading files. If you plan
on allowing people to download music files, pdf files, flash
files, or video files, you can eat up bandwidth in a hurry
even with a relatively small number of people visiting your
website. If your website offers an adobe .pdf file that
is 1 megabyte in size, with one gigabyte of bandwidth, you
will only be able to serve up one thousand downloads. This
does not including the html needed to get people to download
the pdf in the first place.
Video files eat up even more space. A one megabyte video
file represents only seconds of video. For a half hour presentation,
your video file could easily be over two hundred megabytes
in size! At that size, one gigabyte would only allow you
to offer five downloads to your visitors. What you plan
to do with your website most definitely will affect how
much monthly bandwidth you anticipate needing.
Overselling bandwidth is common in the web hosting industry
Because more people use only a fraction of their allotted
bandwidth per month, most web hosting providers price their
plans knowing that most people will only use a fraction
of the resources available to them. In fact, with most companies,
if you did use the maximum bandwidth available to you each
month, you would most likely be shut down. If you go with
a shared hosting account, your website can be hosted with
hundreds or thousands of other websites. If your website
starts to use a significant portion of the server's resources,
you may find them pulling the plug on your website. If you
know your website is going to need significant resources,
you should probably consider getting yourself a dedicated
server.
Knowing what you plan to do will allow you to know how
much you need
By knowing what you plan to do with your hosting account,
you can have a pretty good idea of how much bandwidth you're
going to need. If you anticipate that you will be needing
to serve lots of multimedia including video, music and large
amounts of flash powered pages, you may need to consider
going with a dedicated server. If your website is just starting
out and you have little money and no real idea of how much
bandwidth you're going to need, pick a company that gives
you more than you think you'll need at a reasonable price.
Make sure you also find out how much they will charge you
for any bandwidth you use above and beyond what comes in
your hosting package. If it is one dollar per megabyte and
you've already exceeded a twenty gigabyte bandwidth limit,
changes are, you'll get one hefty bill at the end of the
month. When shopping around and looking at bandwidth, keep
the overage cost in mind as well and you'll do fine.
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