Web Hosting Bandwidth - An Explanation

12:41 AM |
By William MacMahon


You might have heard your web hosting companies using the term "bandwidth" in reference to web hosting and web sites. Bandwidth is the measure of total amount of data that is transferred from one point to another point over network connection. This is measured in bits per second and is considered to be a vital aspect of web hosting services. In blogs and forums, the activities conducted are generally much more than in ordinary website where there is no option to insert data by the visitors. In the former cases, visitors can open their accounts; make comments, vote, and upload images apart from just reading its content. Hence it is obvious that the data transfer and number of hits on these websites are much more than simple company websites. Consequently the bandwidth of these sites are higher that any other average websites.

It may help to break down how you can calculate your monthly website usage and this can be done very simply. The first step should be determining how much bandwidth your website uses, for calculation sake, lets say 20KB. The next step is to work out how many visits your site has per day, which for simplicity sake we shall say is ten hits. This calculations means your daily usage equates to 20 x 10. To get your monthly usage, you simply multiply your daily usage by the number of the days in the month. An important thing to remember is that some providers may list the bandwidth in bytes as opposed to bites.

8 bits = 1 byte and 1024 bytes = 1 Kilobytes

It is easy to use bandwidth unnecessarily and the biggest culprits are large sized graphics and a lot of customer comments. It is also fair to say that if the end user seeks to receive a lot of images or large amounts of data that they too will use a fair share of bandwidth. This has to be borne in mind when you are constructing your website. It is common to want to add a lot of cool audio and visual treats to your site but doing so will greatly increase your bandwidth consumption. Knowing how much bandwidth you expect to use will help you seek the right package for your usage but beware of web host providers not living up to their promise. There are some providers who will not deliver what they guarantee and this makes choosing the correct supplier an important task.

Understand the amount of bandwidth that fits your requirements.

How would you known that what is the required bandwidth of your website? This question needs to be answered from technical and mathematical point of view. This would also determine the website content you are having and have projected to include in future. It is always better to keep some bandwidth in hand as it would allow you to develop the website and include new features later on. You should take out some time in determining the bandwidth required for your website. If required you can discuss the issue with your web hosts who can suggest you better on this. Almost every hosting company measures the bandwidth plan on a monthly basis and hence you can chart your requirements based n that only. Bandwidth is generally measured as:

Average number of times a page is viewed multiplied by the average number of visitors to your site on a daily basis multiplied by a variable factor multiplied by how many days in a month, with 30 being a good average.

To ensure the best use of your site, many website owners decide to offer a larger amount of bandwidth and an equation for this would be:

[(Daily Visitors x Page Views x Page Size) + (Daily File Downloads x File Size)] x 31 x Fudge Factor

Note: All these are measured based on average data.

Relation between bandwidth and traffic:

There is a strong correlation between bandwidth usage and the amount of traffic a website gets. The best judge of this is quite often the visitors to a website as they will have first hand experience of undertaking actions of the site. This can be seen if a visitor wishes to download a music track or a video from the site. This creates traffic between the visitors' computer and the website. The bandwidth this takes up can be very low if the user has a rapid internet connection, which helps the file to download in a short space of time. The opposite can be said if the user has a very slow connection and this will result in a long download time and a large amount of bandwidth being used. This is very important if you are trying to keep note of how many bits are being transferred as this is what is classed as traffic.

Handy ways to reduce your bandwidth size.

It might happen suddenly that you receive a monthly bill for hosting that brings perspiration on your forehead. The hosting company justified the bill explaining that the monthly minimum bandwidth usage has been exceeded for your website and asks you to bring down the file size in your website. You are at a fix and simply do not know what would be your send stand.

Every website is comprised of a number of files and each file on the website takes up so much space. If a visitor to your website comes along and uses these files, this will increase your bandwidth usage. As it is your website, you have the option to control aspects on your website and it is possible to alter how often a file gets used. By limiting the number of images or downloadable items you have available on your site, you can further reduce the bandwidth that is being used on your site. Considering that these files can have a huge size and if they are being downloaded by many users, the overall impact on your bandwidth usage can be very damaging. Altering certain things on your website can also help to reduce its use. For instance, if there is an image or file on your website that is downloaded every time a visitor hits your site, there will be an excessive amount of bandwidth being used. The first action may be too remove the offending file but if this is not an option open to you, you may wish to lower the size of the file. If you are able to do this, you should be rewarded with a lower bill the following month from your bandwidth provider. Another way to look at reducing your bandwidth use is to check for cascading style sheets as they are able to make the size of your HTML files much smaller.

Some bandwidth tips:

* Always keep an estimation of the number of visiting or can visit your page in future. A monthly estimation is always beneficial.

* There are options to buy un-metered bandwidth hosting. In such a plan you are charged higher than nay normal shared or dedicated hosting plan and in return the usage will be unlimited. The host won't monitor the bandwidth rating which is reflected on the left hand side of the control panel.

* When altering your website, ensure you make a note of the changes to allow your estimates to be up to date and more accurate.

* If you can, keep the number of visitors comments to a minimum. You may wish to allow only pre-approved or carefully selected comments onto your site.

* Have a conversation with your provider about being to improve your services. A rise in your usage may not lead to a rise in the amount of bandwidth being used. However, you may be able to benefit by eliminating any files that are no longer required.

* Rather than hosting things like Java Script within your site, try having them hosted with an external agent.

* Bandwidth can be eaten up by graphics with a large size so always ensure to load up graphics that have been reduced in size.

Last points you should remember:

There are many places to get advice on how best to use your bandwidth but the strongest advice would come from your web host. The advice that is offered by the firm should also be factored into the decision you make about provider to go with. There are many factors that will impact on how much your bandwidth costs you but the layout and content will have a lot to do with it. The amount of different factors that can have an influence on the cost involved means the support and advice from your web provider can be a vital factor in keeping your expenditure within budget. This support can be extremely helpful in combating in bandwidth theft. This occurs when other web users place links to graphics and images that are held on your site by linking to them from their site. This is an offense that carries a punishment and is not to be encouraged. This means that if you are advised of undertaking this activity you should always refuse. All decisions in life should feature some form of research and the same can be said for choosing which bandwidth provider to work with. Always be sure to communicate with your web provider to learn the best ways about the best ways to reduce how much bandwidth you use.




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Anonymous December 19, 2011 at 9:45 PM

The hosting company justified the bill explaining that the monthly minimum bandwidth usage has been exceeded for your website and asks you to bring down the file size in your website. web hosting services

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