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What Is Bandwidth?
By: Steve Leggett
In your search
for a hosting company, you will come upon the term Bandwidth. In basic
terms most companies are referring to the number of data that you are
allowed to transfer within a given period of time. The usual period is
set at a month in most cases. If you try to define bandwidth by
dictionary terms it is usually defined as the following:
Bandwidth:
the capacity for data transfer of an electronic
communications system; primarily the maximum data transfer rate of such
a system.
If you browse the website of a hosting firm, you'll notice some state
they allow 5 Gigs Of Bandwidth per month for the particular hosting
package you are interested in ordering. If you
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break that down in terms of megabytes, it will state that 5000
Megabytes of data can be transferred within a given month from your
site. Usually if you go over the allocated amount of bandwidth, you are
then charged an extra fee. |
It is very important to note that
bandwidth is used *everytime*
someone visits your website. Each time an
image loads that is actual bandwidth that is being used and is counted
towards your allocated monthly amount of data transfer. It is important
to always not only factor in the size of your page but the actual size
of the images contained in your site as part of the data transfer. Each
time someone visits your page, it's bandwidth being transferred to
allow them to access your site.
When designing your site it is recommended to optimize the images to
reduce their size so the amount of data being transfered is reduced. It
is pretty simple to calculate the amount of bandwidth your home page
will transfer for each time a person visit's your website. Below you
will find an example:
Total Size Of Home
Page: 10Kb
Total Number Of
Images: 10
Combined Size Of
Images: 75 KB
Total Number Of
Visitors: 1
With that example above, for every *one* person that visits your site
85Kb of data is transferred from your home page alone, this does *not*
include when the person actually browses the rest of your site. If you
do an extensive promotion of your site and receive approximately 500
visitors a day you can multiply the total of 85Kb x 500 = 42,500 KB of
data per day or when changed to Megabytes = 42.5 MB. That is the total
amount of data transferred from your *Home Page* alone per day if you
average 500 visitors daily. It is not as easy to figure the total
amount if the person views other pages of your website as some will
browse up to 5 more pages while others browse just one other page and
leave.
This example was to give you an estimate or an idea of how the
bandwidth operates and to help in your decision on which package to
choose when searching for a hosting company. If you are starting a new
site, it maybe wise to go with the smallest bandwidth package and as
your site grows in traffic/data transfer then you can usually inform
the host that you would like to upgrade to a higher bandwidth package.
Beware of fees charged for going over your allocated limit, and always
ask your host for any information or control panel feature that would
allow you to monitor your bandwidth.
About The Author
Steve Leggett is the owner of WebHostGear.com and many other
upcoming
Internet properties. Steve runs Tower Host which specializes in
Reseller Hosting and Cpanel Hosting services.
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