What is bandwidth in Web Hosting ?
This article covers the topic of What is bandwidth in Web Hosting, and is intended to give you an idea of the amount of bandwidth your website might need. Often we see customers overpaying for packages with third party webhosting companies, they have been sold which are simply too large for their needs. Overselling typically means overpaying.
Now we explain the topic about What is bandwidth in Web Hosting
What is bandwidth in Web Hosting ?
Bandwidth in computer networking refers to the data rate supported by a network connection or interface. Most hosting companies offer a variety of bandwidth options in their plans from 1 G to 100 G, some hosting companies even offer unlimited bandwidth. So exactly What is bandwidth in Web Hosting ?
The term “bandwidth” takes on a different meaning depending on the technology and topic being discussed. For instance, radio bandwidth refers to the numerical difference between the lower frequency and the upper frequency of an approximate set of frequencies which are measured in Hertz.
On the other hand, web hosting bandwidth is measured either in Megabytes (MB) or Gigabytes (GB). Web hosting bandwidth can be defined as the total sum of data that you can either upload or download from your web hosting server. The term “web hosting bandwidth” is also interchangeable with the term “data transfer” and its values are usually calculated on a monthly basis.
What is the difference between bandwidth and traffic ?
Now we compare What is bandwidth in Web Hosting and traffic –
Web hosting bandwidth vs traffic just like highways vs cars. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway and traffic is the number of cars on the highway. Traffic is simply the number of bits that are transferred on network connections. Bandwidth is the number of bits can be transferred on network connections within a given period of time.
If you have 100MB website bandwidth and you host a 40MB video on the website for visitors to download. Each download will create 40MB traffic between the web server and local computer. Two downloads will create 80 MB traffic, three downloads will create 120 MB traffic. If all the three downloads occur at the same time, all the bandwidth will be used up. In such case, someone will have to wait. Your hosting company will cycle through each person downloading the file and transfer a small portion at a time so each person’s file transfer can take place, but the transfer for everyone downloading the video will be slower. The more visitors at the same time, the slower the transfers would be.
Understanding the Sufficiency of Bandwidth
What is bandwidth in Web Hosting? Almost every web hosting company have a specific amount of bandwidth locked on their web hosting package. That is why it is critical to know how much amount of bandwidth you have required for your website. Now, I will explain it with a general formula
Total Bandwidth = Visitors x Page Views x Page Weight x File Size x File Download
- For low traffic (less than 5,000 monthly), Average website bandwidth usage is around 20 GB
- 50 GB or less bandwidth is enough for less than 20,000 visitors per month (no direct downloads)
- If you allow the direct download to your visitors than you should get 10 times more bandwidth than normal
- 500 GB or more bandwidth is required for high traffic website with 200,000 visitors (no direct downloads)
Why is Bandwidth Important for a Website ?
Before you know that What is bandwidth in Web Hosting, first you need to understand about why is bandwidth is important for websites –
Unfortunately, Web space only allows you to upload your files online. However, if you want to serve them to the public, Bandwidth is an essential factor. With bandwidth, you can serve your data to the world wide web, depends on your bandwidth usage.
Check Bandwidth from traffic stats report
What is bandwidth in Web Hosting? An easy way to know how much Bandwidth is enough for your website is to check the traffic stats provided by your previous host. If you have an existing website hosted with a host and decided to transfer the site to a new host, you can refer to the traffic report of stats with last hosting company. Almost all of the web hosting service providers can offer the website stats reporting service.
Usually if you have a brand new same website without much content yet, you can go for a shared hosting, as normally you will not need more than 1GB of bandwidth per month except you will invest a lot of money on ads or hire professional marketing team as soon as the new site launches. It is the same with most personal web hosting or small business websites. If you can expect little traffic to your site always go with a low bandwidth plan at the initial stage. After all, most web hosting companies will offer you upgrade options for more bandwidth if you need.
How can I reduce bandwidth usage
What is bandwidth in Web Hosting? Is there anyway to reduce the bandwidth usage? Yes. If you like to reduce the website bandwidth, you can design a website with css and clean code, this can slim down the web page size. Also try reduce the usage of heavy images, especially downloads and videos on your website.
What is unlimited bandwidth ?
After you know that What is bandwidth in Web Hosting, you should must know about what is unlimited bandwidth –
You may find why there are so many web hosting companies announced to offer unlimited bandwidth for the shared web hosting servers. Is it unlimited bandwidth for real? Okay, let we explain more about the unlimited bandwidth. First, the unlimited bandwidth is not real unlimited. Why? Since most of the websites do not use too much website bandwidth and then the web hosting providers dared to offer unlimited bandwidth for the shared hosting servers. Such as my website is only using about 5GB bandwidth per month and I think most of the websites do not need too much bandwidth. If your website having massive visitors and require large bandwidth, you may consider to host with VPS or Dedicated server.
Who is best web hosting with unlimited bandwidth ?
Here are the list of the unlimited bandwidth web hosting who can be full trusted – Hostgator, Arvixe, GreenGeeks, IX Web Hosting, InMotion Hosting! HostGator is a leading Linux-based web hosting service provider, Arvixe is a featured web hosting who can support both Linux and windows, GreenGeeks is the best green web hosting, IX Web Hosting is an excellent client service support web hosting and InMotion hosting is one of the fastest growing web hosting.
Benefits of Unlimited Bandwidth
- Having said that, some web hosting providers offer unlimited bandwidth web hosting which is especially attractive for large websites or websites with a lot of traffic.
- When you think about the term “unlimited bandwidth”, it’s easier if you connect that feature with the analogy of an all-you-can-eat buffet. The diners know that they are free to eat all the food at the buffet, despite the knowing fact that there isn’t exactly an endless supply of food coming out of the kitchen. Because the restaurant understands that these diners can eat to their hearts content and still leave plenty of leftovers behind, they daringly advertise their buffet as an all-you-can-eat.
- The reason why these web hosting companies advertise their shared web hosting plans as plans that come with unlimited bandwidth is simply because it does wonders for a marketing campaign. Furthermore, most website owners will never use more than half of their allocated bandwidth either, meaning that their sites will never risk being shut down.
- Signing up for a unlimited web hosting plan on a shared server is also much cheaper than signing up for a virtual private server or having your own dedicated server. For instance, GreenGeeks offers an unlimited bandwidth hosting plan for $4.95 per month on its shared server. On the other hand, the cheapest VPS hosting is billed at $19.95 per month for a maximum bandwidth of 150GB.
Web Hosting Bandwidth In a Nutshell
What is bandwidth in Web Hosting ? Web hosting bandwidth can be easily confused with other bandwidth-related keywords. In this web hosting context, bandwidth simply refers to the maximum amount of data you can transfer from your web hosting server to another computer. If you have sufficient bandwidth, your website will be up and working on the web server. However, once you’ve exceeded your bandwidth, your website will be temporarily suspended and become inaccessible to your website visitors.
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