Bandwidth
or Data Transfer
Bandwidth Or Data Transfer
Too often web hosts talk about bandwidth and data transfer in the
same breath but truth be known they are different although very
closely related. Bandwidth is how much data can be transferred at
a time and data transfer is how much data is being transferred.
Think of it this way. If bandwidth were a bridge, then the bigger
the bridge is the more vehicles can pass through it. While data
transfer is the number of vehicles allowed on the bridge in say
a month. In essence, data transfer is the consumption of bandwidth.
How It Affects Your Site
The less bandwidth you have, the slower your site takes to load
regardless of the visitor's connection type. If you have more visitors,
some of them will have to wait their turn. The least data transfer
you have, the more often you'll find your site unavailable because
you're reached the maximum allowed until a new month rolls by or
you upgrade your account.
Determining Your Requirements
Usually when a host talks about bandwidth, they are referring to
your transfer. So you need to figure out what is sufficient for
your site to function. You'll need to gather some information; fairly
easy if you already have a site. Most of this information is available
from your traffic history. If you don't have an existing site, provide
an optimistic estimate if you intend to heavily promote the site.
Then get ready for some math.
Find out the daily averages of: -
• Number of visitors / expected number of visitors
• Page size including the graphics of the page
• Page views / expected pages viewed by each visitor
Then, multiply them as follows: Visitors x Page size x Page views
x 30 days = Monthly Website Transfer
You should also throw in a small margin or error there to take
into account email traffic and your own uploads to the server. If
you offer downloads, then you should add the following:
Average/Expected downloads x File Size x 30 days = Monthly Download
Transfer
Unlimited Plans
Bandwidth is very expensive. All hosts are limited by their own
allocations. Thinking back to the bridge. What happens is each visitor
to your site will be given a smaller lane to transfer the data,
creating many tiny lanes therefore "unlimited". The more
visitors you have the smaller each lane will be, which makes each
visitor wait for the page to load.
More often than not there is little choice over your bandwidth
as your host controls this. Some hosts may limit the number of simultaneous
connections so in affect slowing down your site and refusing some
visitors. This is called throttling. If you're concerned about this,
you should ask the host how they control bandwidth usage or purchase
a package with more data transfer. If you use HostVoice.net , this
information is easily obtainable with one request.
Reducing Transfers
On the other hand, you can reduce your transfer amount by building
simpler, more efficient websites and optimizing your graphics. Refrain
from fancy flash presentations or streaming audio. Use CSS, call
JavaScript externally instead of embedding in every page. Remove
unwanted tags, white space and comments. Limit your META tags to
those absolutely necessary. Having too many keywords is not search
engine friendly. Besides many search engines will only review the
first few and ignore the rest.
Another good idea is to cache your website but you might want to
set an expiry date in the HTTP headers so the browser will refresh
the content after a certain time. Use mod-gzip. It could save you
as much as 40% of your bandwidth. Out of control robots can also
suck down your bandwidth like a black hole. So use robots.txt to
keep spiders in check.
About the Author HostVoice.net
Related resources
How to Reduce Web Hosting
Bandwidth Usage
Using too much bandwidth on your hosting plan will result in paying
higher fees. Learn how to cut your bandwidth usage and save money.
What
is Bandwidth / Download?
Bandwidth is a measure of the amount of data passing through a network
at a given time. Things like huge images on web pages and needless
questions posted to Usenet newsgroups waste bandwidth which could
be better utilized for transferring information.
Bandwidth
Or Data Transfer - Which is Which?
Too often web hosts talk about bandwidth and data transfer in the
same breath but truth be known they are different although very
closely related. Bandwidth is how much data can be transferred at
a time and data transfer is how much data is being transferred.
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