Do You Understand Bandwidth?

When it comes to web hosting, bandwidth is one of the most essential aspects and a key resource you need to be on the look for. So what is bandwidth? Let most people tell it, its the exact same thing as data transfer. Though closely associated, bandwidth and data transfer are two entirely different animals. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be transferred at once while data transfer is the amount of data transferred in a given period. Since bandwidth acts as the bridge that allows visitors to come through and transfer data from your site, bandwidth is essentially a measure of data transfer. Got it? I hope so.

Why is Bandwidth So Important?

Bandwidth is absolutely vital to your website. Without enough, your pages might load incredibly slow, so much that visitors endure such a horrible performance they never want to return. If you’re not working with enough bandwidth and happen to exceed it, your site can become completely inaccessible. I’ve ran across my fair share of sites that read nothing but “the webmaster has exceeded their bandwidth limits”. This is not something you want reflecting on your online identity so it is imperative to get an amply supply from the jump.

Determining Your Bandwidth Needs

You will undoubtedly run across a gang of web hosting companies advertising “UNLIMITED” everything - unlimited domain hosting, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth - you name it, they got it. Let’s get this out of the way - there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth or anything else. The most powerful server hardware has its limits and bandwidth, well its not free, web hosting providers have to pay for it. Think they’re just gonna let you use up an endless amount? Yeah right, you wish.

So, with every other web hosting company up to their necks in gimmicks, how does one know how much bandwidth they need? You’d have to be a certified genius to determine the exact amount but there are a few ways to narrow it down.

Website Architecture

One of the easiest ways to determine if you will require a modest or robust amount of bandwidth is to consider to the architecture of your site. For instance, do you simply plan on having a site that contains mostly text and a few images? If so, this type of design would not require a lot of bandwidth. On the other hand, if your site is to consist of media-rich content such as audio and video files, you’re gonna need a substantial amount of bandwidth. In this regard, the number of files, their size and type will play a major part in determining how much bandwidth your site requires.

Website Traffic

Another way to determine your bandwidth needs is to take a guess at how much traffic you anticipate. You haven’t even created the site yet so of course you won’t come up with an exact number - give it a shot though. It’s easy to conclude that you will need much more bandwidth for a site that you’ve been promoting hard for business purposes opposed to one that will only be viewed by your friends and family. My advice is to find a web hosting company that offers a generous amount of bandwidth, anywhere from 300 to 1000 GB per month, along with web statistics tool that allows you to gauge monthly traffic. This type of utility will let you view monthly traffic and also how much bandwidth is being consumed. From there, you can determine if you have enough or need to upgrade to a bigger package.