Friday, 26 August 2011

Web Hosting Bandwidth Information

By William MacMahon


"Bandwidth" is a title that you may have heard many web hosts, including your own, discussing from time to time. A simple definition of this term is that is how much data is passed over an internet connection from one set to another. Bandwidth is one of the most important services that a web host can provide and is usually measured in how bits are sent each second. The amount of data being used on a website varies depending on what the the website is being used for. Sites where there is a lot of interaction and communication will take up a bigger bandwidth and this means sites like forums or blogs take up more bandwidth than a more common website. These sites offer far more interaction with the opportunity to load up content and add debate or opinions which is why they take up more bandwidth. These websites will have a greater amount of traffic in comparison to standard websites provided by firms which is another reason why in comparison, the amount of bandwidth that is used by communication or network sites will be much higher.

To define bandwidth mathematically one can say that, if your website is of 10 KB and the total number of hits is 20 per day, then your bandwidth would be 10 x 20 bites and if you want a monthly report multiple it with 30. Bandwidth is sometimes measured in bytes also.

Many people get confused about how to translate the sizes but an easy way to remember it is that one byte is the equivalent of eight bits. The next step up is 1 kilobyte and this is the equivalent of 1024 bytes.

The heavy images on websites and too many feedbacks from the customers waste bandwidth. Moreover, if the user tends to download heavy items from the web then he/she would be expecting heavy consumption of bandwidth as well. Therefore, if you want your website to be filled up with videos, graphics and information then make sure that the bandwidth provided by your web host matches with your requirements. Some of the web hosts promise to provide large number of such services but later they turn their faces. Hence, in this respect proper selection of the hosts is also demanded.

Determine the amount of bandwidth you need

How would you known that what is the required bandwidth of your website? This question needs to be answered from technical and mathematical point of view. This would also determine the website content you are having and have projected to include in future. It is always better to keep some bandwidth in hand as it would allow you to develop the website and include new features later on. You should take out some time in determining the bandwidth required for your website. If required you can discuss the issue with your web hosts who can suggest you better on this. Almost every hosting company measures the bandwidth plan on a monthly basis and hence you can chart your requirements based n that only. Bandwidth is generally measured as:

The number of days per month times times the number of pages viewed times the number of visitors who use your site daily times the size of your page.

To ensure the best use of your site, many website owners decide to offer a larger amount of bandwidth and an equation for this would be:

[(Daily Visitors x Page Views x Page Size) + (Daily File Downloads x File Size)] x 31 x Fudge Factor

Note: All these are measured based on average data.

Relation between bandwidth and traffic:

Bandwidth and traffic are closely interlinked with each other. Visitors can experience best the bandwidth as they are the people who carry out various activities with the websites. If a visitor wants to download an MP3 files from a website into the computer, then 4MB traffic is created between the website and the user's computer. If the user is having a fast internet connection then the file won't take much time to get downloaded and hence the bandwidth consumed in the process would be low. The reverse happens if the internet connectivity is poor. Traffic is measured by the number of bits that are transferred on network connections.

Handy ways to reduce your bandwidth size.

We all dread bills and an unexpected bill can really cause panic and problems to a person. If you exceed your bandwidth amount, your provider is well within their rights to charge you for this as well as send you a reminder to keep your usage down. This may obviously cause you problems and you could be wondering how you can fix this problem.

Yours website has several files, each of these files have respective sizes of their own. Each of these files, when used by the visitors, consumes some of the website bandwidth. You have control on the bandwidth usage of your website and can increase or decrease these according to the requirements. Another easy way to cut down bandwidth expenses is to prevent the use of too many files, graphics, images and downloadable file son your website. These files themselves are heavy and when downloaded by multiple users, can consume lots of bandwidth thus increasing cost. Suppose there is a large image in the webpage that is downloaded each time a visitor views the website. Then also the same thing happens and unnecessary bandwidth expenditure takes place. If removing the web page images is not possible, then try to decrease its size and you can seen the dramatic change in the bill, next time, when the web hosting company hand it over to you. Cascading Style Sheets also help you to save bandwidth as they reduce HTML file sizes considerably.

Ways to improve your bandwidth use:

* Always keep an estimation of the number of visiting or can visit your page in future. A monthly estimation is always beneficial.

* There are options to buy un-metered bandwidth hosting. In such a plan you are charged higher than nay normal shared or dedicated hosting plan and in return the usage will be unlimited. The host won't monitor the bandwidth rating which is reflected on the left hand side of the control panel.

* When altering your website, ensure you make a note of the changes to allow your estimates to be up to date and more accurate.

* If there is an opportunity to limit the amount of comments a visitor can make to your site, this could be a good option to reduce excessive inputs.

* Talk to your web hosting company regularly for upgrading your website. Upgrading doesn't always mean that there will be an increase in the bandwidth consumption. But this can also decrease the consumption of bandwidth by elimination unnecessary files.

* A better way to embed JavaScript may be to do it on an external site as opposed to having it placed on every page.

* Always upload resized images as heavy images consume bandwidth.

The final words:

There are many places to get advice on how best to use your bandwidth but the strongest advice would come from your web host. The advice that is offered by the firm should also be factored into the decision you make about provider to go with. There are many factors that will impact on how much your bandwidth costs you but the layout and content will have a lot to do with it. The amount of different factors that can have an influence on the cost involved means the support and advice from your web provider can be a vital factor in keeping your expenditure within budget. This support can be extremely helpful in combating in bandwidth theft. This occurs when other web users place links to graphics and images that are held on your site by linking to them from their site. This is an offense that carries a punishment and is not to be encouraged. This means that if you are advised of undertaking this activity you should always refuse. All decisions in life should feature some form of research and the same can be said for choosing which bandwidth provider to work with. Always be sure to communicate with your web provider to learn the best ways about the best ways to reduce how much bandwidth you use.




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