Web Hosting Data Transfer: How Much Is Too Much?

By: Joe Duchesne
Submitted: 2007-01-17 15:02:57
Print this article | Tell a friend | For publisher | Social Bookmarking
Rating:
 

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.

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting company that strives to make it easy to setup and maintain your website. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you link back to my website from this resource box.

Article source: Expert Articles

Most Recent Articles in Web Hosting category

  • Getting Ranked By Google - By: James Betchley
    Once you have created your web site you need to get Ranked by Google and the other search engines, and more importantly, ranked highly in Google and the Search Engine Result Positions SERPs. Search engine optimization (SEO) has been compared to an art form, and while it is true that due to the changing ranking algorithms of Google and the major search engines it is not an exact science, but there are some tried and tested methods which will help you towards that coveted first page position.
  • Web Hosting the 6 Factors You Need to Consider - By: James Betchley
    The webhosting market is flooded with tens of thousands of different webhosts all offering lots of choices, so how do you decide? The truth is 80% is these hosts all offer great hosting and to avoid the 20% that don't you just need to follow the following 5 steps.
  • Tips for reseller web hosting - By: Gardner Wilkinson
    The term 'reseller web hosting' may seem a little confounding. But, reseller web hosting is a popular way of making money by selling hosting plans. These packages are meant for small companies that do not have their own hosting servers, but take the server space from a parent company and resell it on their behalf.
  • Why You Need a Paid Web Hosting - By: Mike Bowden
    Lots of web hosting service providers are offering identical packages today. And hence it will be difficult for you to choose the right web hosting service for your web site. Choosing the best suited web hosting plan is very important for a smooth running web site.
  • The Different Types of Web Hosting - By: Mike Bowden
    Choosing the right web hosting entirely depends on your web site needs. There are lots of web hosting solutions that are available today. Therefore it is very important to research and evaluate the different web hosting services to pick the correct one.
  • Choosing the Right Web Hosting - By: Mike Bowden
    Web hosting can be defined in a simple form, as the space provided on a web server for storing the collection of files related to a web site. A web site is a combination of various files and text linked together with the help of HTML or other programming languages.
  • Cheap Web Hosting Versus Expensive Web Hosting - By: Joel McLaughlin
    Today we are going to compare a few of the differences that you can find when it comes to cheap web hosting and expensive web hosting.
  • Features To Look For When Buying Cheap Web Hosting - By: Joel McLaughlin
    Just because a company offers cheap web hosting does not mean that their service is no good. In fact, some of the best web hosting companies out there actually offer great prices on their web hosting.
  • Who Uses Cheap Web Hosting Services - By: Joel McLaughlin
    Not everyone is able to afford the top of the line web hosting, thus, people like to use cheap web hosting. The important thing to remember is that cheap web hosting does not always mean bad web hosting.
  • Cheap Web Hosting That Focuses On Customer Service - By: Joel McLaughlin
    It can be hard starting up your own web page for the first time. If you have never started up a web page before, then you are more than likely going to have a lot of questions before you get started.