Understanding Bandwidth

Author: Alyice Edrich

I remember the first time I went to purchase space on the Internet. I was not only confused, but I literally felt like throwing my computer through the window. I knew that I needed to rent space on someone’s server in order to upload my website for the world to see, but I didn’t understand what bandwidth meant or how it applied to my website.

What did kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte mean? Why did the size of my own website matter and how was I supposed to know the size when I could barely understand html coding? And finally what did I really need and what would be a useless waste of my money?

I tried getting help from my colleagues but they were as clueless as I. Even today, I wonder if I fully understand the whole bandwidth thing. Yet, here I am hoping to give you some insight into the mystery of bandwidths.

Bandwidth Data Transfer

Bandwidth is essentially a fixed amount of data that can travel over the Internet during a set period of time. In other words, it is the amount of data that is transferred from your website to another computer. The more visitors you have, the more bandwidth you’ll need to deliver your website to those computers.

Traveling from one computer to another is timed in bits per second (or bps). One bit is equivalent to one binary digit of information. That binary digit is then used to form the text, graphics, and designs you see on your website.

The Host Wants To Know

In order for a web host to successfully host your website, the host needs to know how much space your website is going to take up on its server, how long a single web page is going to take to transfer across the Internet, how large the file you store for download is, how much traffic you expect to receive in any given month (visitors and page views), and how much space you’ll need for email delivery and receipt.

Having a fairly accurate estimate of your bandwidth usage is essential to the success of your business because if you don’t purchase enough bandwidth, your web host will stop allowing visitors to view your website—in essence, your web host will shut you down. Instead of seeing the wonderful work you put into your website, what visitors, over your allotted capacity, will see is an ugly message from your web host stating that you have gone over your bandwidth and asking you, the administrator, to contact the company to reinstate the website. And in the event that your web host allows you to go over your allotted bandwidth, you’ll discover a hefty fee with next month’s bill!

Choosing The Right Plan

Choosing the right bandwidth can be a tricky affair, but with a little help from your web host of choice, you can find the perfect package within your budget. Just remember to keep an eye on the following tid-bits:

Everything is broken down in terms of kilobyte (kb), megabyte (mg or meg), or gigabyte (gb or gig). To understand what those terms mean, you need to understand that eight bits equates to one byte. Therefore, one kilobyte equals 1,000 bytes, one megabyte equals 1,000 kilobytes, and one gigabyte equals 1,000 megabytes.
To get a rough idea of how much bandwidth (transfer) you need multiply the average size of your web pages (text plus images plus downloads) by the number of visitors you expect per month. Then times that amount by ten percent to cover growth. That’s a fairly rough estimate of how much bandwidth you’ll need to purchase.
Let us assume that your average web page is 60 kilobytes and you have 100 visitors per month. 60 kilobytes times 100 is 6,000 kilobytes. 6,000 kilobytes times 10% equals 6,600 kilobytes of bandwidth (or transfer) used per month which means you will need to start out with 7 megabytes of bandwidth.
Determine the size of your website by multiplying the number of web pages by the average size of your web pages. This is important in helping you determine how much space you will need to host on your web host’s server.

Saving Bandwidth

Finally, don’t forget that saving bandwidth is just as important as discovering how much bandwidth to purchase. So the next time you work on your website, remember these bandwidth saving tips:

A file compression utility can save space by compressing your graphic and image without distorting the image itself.
Instead of loading a large picture to your web host then using html coding to make it appear smaller when viewed, load the correct size image.
Write tight coding. Avoid duplicating “rules” and use script whenever possible.
Only offer .pdf files or downloads when they truly benefit your company.
Avoid offering RSS feeds that do not help promote your company or sale a product.
Drop forums that don’t somehow contribute to the success of your business.
Use your robots.txt file to ban search engines from crawling web pages you do not want the public to view. You can also ban search engines from caching images.
Store your cascading style sheets in a file of their own.
Keep an eye out for unusual traffic as some people steal bandwidth by linking to your images instead of purchasing their own images.

Now go out and purchase web space for your domain and get off those free web servers!