When you access a web site, you are downloading a file. This file can be an HTML web page, a GIF image, a MIDI sound file, or a coMBination of these. These files are downloaded to your computer and displayed in your web browser.
Each time you download a file, data is being transferred. The amount of data depends on the size of the file. If you download a web page that is 1 kilobyte (1,024 bytes), or 1 KB, in size, then 1 KB of data has been transferred. If 100 people access that same web page, then 100 KB of data has been transferred.
Term Meaning NuMBer of Bytes
KB kilobyte 1,024
MB Megabyte 1,048,576
GB Gigabyte 1,073,741,824
Bandwidth is the term used to measure the amount of data being transferred from your web space. This does not directly relate to the nuMBer of 'Hits' a web site receives. One single hit to a web page that is 100 KB in size uses the same amount of bandwidth as 100 hits to a 1 KB page.
You will want to be wary of any host offering a certain amount of 'Hits'. Always look for a bandwidth allotment when looking for a host.
How much do I need?
Let's imagine we give three people, John, Mary, and Kathy, each a $1,000.00 gift certificate to a shopping mall. They can spend that however they wish and take as many different trips to the mall as is needed to spend the money.
Mary is a money wise shopper. She buys a lot of small items over a period of time, making many trips to the mall.
Kathy makes fewer trips than Mary, spending around $100 each time purchasing quite a few items each trip.
John is a big spender. He buys a new stereo system and spends the whole $1,000 in one trip.
If the $1,000 is an amount of bandwidth, with the shopping mall being the web server, here's what it would boil down to:
Mary's site would be a smaller web site with very few graphics, but lots of traffic (hits). Her site wouldn't use a lot of bandwidth per hit.
Kathy's site would have a lot of graphics and other overhead, so hers wouldn't take as many hits to use up her bandwidth.
John's site would offer a large file for download, probably a shareware program. His site would use a lot of bandwidth with a single hit.
So what does this mean?
The above example shows us that there is no defined nuMBer of hits available to a given amount of bandwidth - it depends on what is being downloaded for each hit. Obviously, the larger the download, the more bandwidth is used, and thus the less hits you can have for that amount of bandwidth.
How much bandwidth a site will use depends on many factors. You have to consider what kinds of files people will be downloading.
Unlimited Bandwidth
If and when you run across a host claiming to offer Unlimited Bandwidth, you will definitely want to find out what their meaning of unlimited really is. No host can really offer true unlimited bandwidth. If you could get unlimited bandwidth for around $20.00 a month or less, why isn't Yahoo or Microsoft hosted there?
You will find that there is no such thing as unlimited. You will always find somewhere stating what is meant by the term. Usually it will fall under one of three categories:
Your site must 'Qualify' for unlimited bandwidth.
A lot of hosts do this - if your site uses less than, say, 5 gigs per month, it qualifies for unlimited bandwidth. As soon as your traffic goes above that you no longer qualify for the unlimited bandwidth and are either charged for the excess or forced to move your site. In other words, it's unlimited as long as you stay within the limits...
Restricted bandwidth.
This is where a host allows you all the bandwidth you want, providing that you do not offer mp3, zip, tar, exe, and a nuMBer of other file types that are usually larger than standard HTML and graphics. Further, they usually require that all files stored in your space be linked only from your own pages. This means that you must use all of your files, graphics, etc, only on your web site, and cannot allow other sites to link to them (other than linking to your HTML).
Outright lie.
There are some hosts that simply advertise things that they cannot offer. They say things like "We won't penalize you for your success", and once your site does become too popular, you find that your account has been deactivated. A lot of these hosts will have stipulations buried in their TOS pages that don't relate to bandwidth, but that they can easily snag anyone on. These are little backup plans they use as an excuse to deactivate an account, usually without refund, for whatever reason they want to. This way they are not known for kicking sites off for bandwidth reasons, but rather for a TOS violation. But word does travel...
Luckily the hosts that fall under # 3 usually do not last unless they change their policies before too many people become aware of their business practices.
Why do they do it?
Hosts use false advertising because other hosts do it. They figure that the majority of consumers do not understand how little bandwidth they really need, and will never know that it is not really unlimited. For the most part it is true that most people do not understand bandwidth - they see a limit at one host, and another host with no limit, and they figure better safe than sorry... Unfortunately, there are those who do use it and learn this lesson the hard way.
Statistically, most sites use less than 500 MB per month, which is 1/2 of one gig. Unless you are offering software or mp3 downloads or are just extremely popular, you shouldn't have to worry too much about bandwidth. Just keep in mind that if a host falsely advertises Unlimited Bandwidth, who knows what else they are lying about?
Why is unlimited limited?
Once, while discussing where the term unlimited came from, and why it is no longer a viable option, when referring to hosting and their features, I created a short story to help the site owners visualize what happened. The following is a section of that post (with slight edits for clarity).
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... Once upon a time, in a virtual world not so long ago, Web hosts put out a huge bowl of M&Ms® for everyone to munch on.
Many hosts said, "Eat all you want, it's a Munch-A-Thon!" At that time most people could not eat more then a small handful, which meant the hosts could serve a lot of people. And all of the people felt full and satisfied with their handful of M&Ms® and they even felt the freedom of knowing they could eat however many they wanted.
Then, all of the sudden the people said, we want milk with our M&Ms®, and we need paper towels because they do in fact melt in your hands, and we want to share our M&Ms® with other people, and we really could use to be able to add Peanut M&Ms® to the mixture! To make it even more interesting a new breed of people started appearing at the Munch-A-Thon, and these people were able to consume entire bags of M&Ms® rather then just handfuls.
No one wanted to pay more for this... but the hosts decided to add all of these things to the bowl. This started the next phase of Munch-A-Thons. The hosts were running out of M&Ms®. People had to stand in long lines and wait to be served. Problems were found with many of the M&Ms®. At first they were simple things... an M had been rubbed off... but then they became more complex... peanuts were missing and milk was becoming sour. The people began to scream in outrage! "No one can offer all-you-can-eat M&Ms® at a Munch-A-Thon! You are lying to us and deceiving us and essentially telling us you will give us all of these M&Ms® when in fact you can't! I brought my children here to eat M&Ms® and you kicked me out because you didn't have enough for them. Now I am out in the cold, with hungry children, and it's all because you deceived me!"
So here we are at the revolution of Munch-A-Thons. Hosts are scrambling to find the answers. They gave the munchers all of the extras, but they didn't charge for them. Now they are being torn in different directions. They can continue to lie to the munchers or they can start charging the munchers. Either way there will be business lost and there will be innocent munchers, that never ate more then a handful, confused as to what is happening.
I have read the articles, watched various forums, listened to the people, and taken in the above story. It is what is happening to hosts everywhere. The resolution to the problems needs to be found NOW. Those that continue to deceive the site owners about what can be offered, with the new standards the site owners require, WILL go out of business. The sites on those servers will be SOL when they do! ...
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If you are the type of site owner that is looking for an old fashioned "Munch-A-Thon" from a host, you may want to re-consider your expectations. Not to long ago, before CGI, PHP, ASP, E-Commerce, and real time media, were popular, hosts could serve ten times the sites they are able to serve now. The sites have changed; they've grown up so to speak. What once took minimal resources to serve now takes an extreme amount of resources and requires many more options to function correctly. The rules have changed. Surfers aren't surfing with 14.4 modems anymore. If your host is not changing with those rules, you will likely find that your host will not exist for much longer. Stay informed. Choose a host that does the same.
