Bandwidth

Bandwidth is, simply put, the amount of data that is sent between your web host's server and the visitors computer. If you have a lot of visitors to your websites and and they all download large files from you such as mp3s and video clips, then you will need a great amount of bandwidth.

Often people fail to plan adequately for the future and inadvertently have their web sites shut down in the middle of the month because their web site was much more popular than they ever expected. To preven this from happening to you, carefully consider how much bandwidth you will need and plan ahead.

How Much Bandwidth?

One of the main differences between shared and dedicated servers is the differece in the amount of bandwidth provided per month. The vast majoirity of hosts will define the bandwidth amount in GB (Gigabytes; 1 GB = 1,000 MB). Below is an easy way to calculate the amount of bandwidth you will need for a month.

• Total = visits a day x page views per visit x average page size x 30 (number of days a month)

Example for a site with 1000 visits a day, 4 page views per visit, and a page size of 45KB (kilobyte):

• 1000 x 4 x 45KB x 30 = 4,500,000KB = 4,500 MB = 4.5 GB

This web site would require a plan with a minimum of 4.5 GB of bandwidth a month. However, to allow for growth, it would be wise to choose a plan with excess bandwidth, in case there is an unusually large amount of visitors in a month.

Dedicated Lines

If you have dedicated servers or co-location plans you will possibly have the option to go with a dedicated connection of some speed. Dedicated lines generally vary from 256kb/s (kilobits per second) all the way up to 100Mb/s (megabits per second). These options are good for web sites with a steady stream of traffic, with very little need for burst bandwidth. Burst bandwidth is just the term used when a site is sending data at an unusually high rate compared to its normal rate. If you have a dedicated line, as opposed to a certain amount of GB a month, your site will not be able to handle high bandwidth peaks, you will effectively be throttled back to the maximum throughput of your dedicated connection.

Below is a table of how much bandwidth (in GB) you would be able to get out of a dedicated line, in ideal conditions, over a one month period. In reality the chances are you will not get peak speeds as your traffic will not be equally spaced out over the month, so we have included a Real World amount that will probably be closer to the GB you will actually get.