What is Bandwidth

Most hosting companies offer a variety of bandwidth options in their plans. So exactly what is bandwidth as it relates to web hosting? Put simply, bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to occur between your web site and the rest of the internet. The amount of bandwidth a hosting company can provide is determined by their network connections, both internal to their data center and external to the public internet.

How Much Web Hosting Bandwidth Do I Need?
Ah! That’s a trick question. You already know, by way of analogy, that if you have a mostly text site, only a few MB in size, with only a few thousand visitors per month that you don’t need much.

My site is growing, however, what about when I have 10,000 visitors per day. I’ll need much more bandwidth on my account than I have today as those 10,000 visitors eat up bandwidth with every page viewed (and there are lots of great pages to view here). So, one factor, in bandwidth choice would be the number of visitors to your site.

Here’s another analogy. I gave some free web space to a friend of mine who was having a baby and told her she could upload Windows Media files in the form of videos and audio up to her site. Lo and behold, the week her child was born, I got a warning that one of my web hosting accounts was about to exceed its bandwidth limit. Turns out she had uploaded some 2 minute video clips of the baby, each 10 MB in size. Dozens of friends and well-wishers wanted to view the video of the baby. You can imagine, with repeated downloads, how quickly bandwidth can add up when it is being downloaded 10 MB at a time. The same is true of websites that host large photos with web hosting bandwidth metered off 1 MB at a time every time a person views or downloads a large image.

If you want a rule of thumb, get a high bandwidth web hosting account when:

A: You are going to have lots of visitors
B: You are hosting large files, video, or photos
C: Both a and b are true

Keep in mind that some host’s unmetered bandwidth does not apply to sites that primarily host videos and photos or are for file-sharing but, if you are a business with an information website and expect tons of visitors then you can, theoretically, host as many customers as you want since for you the bandwidth is unmetered. If you want a lot of bandwidth, with no restrictions regarding file-sharing, video, photos, or audio then high bandwidth plans are the plans for you. As always, requirements should dictate your choice.

Knowing what you plan to do will allow you to know how much you need
By knowing what you plan to do with your hosting account, you can have a pretty good idea of how much bandwidth you're going to need. If you anticipate that you will be needing to serve lots of multimedia including video, music and large amounts of flash powered pages, you may need to consider going with a dedicated server. If your website is just starting out and you have little money and no real idea of how much bandwidth you're going to need, pick a company that gives you more than you think you'll need at a reasonable price. Make sure you also find out how much they will charge you for any bandwidth you use above and beyond what comes in your hosting package. If it is one dollar per megabyte and you've already exceeded a twenty gigabyte bandwidth limit, changes are, you'll get one hefty bill at the end of the month. When shopping around and looking at bandwidth, keep the overage cost in mind as well and you'll do fine.

Please read out AUP on Bandwidth if you run a high usage site.