As you look for potential web hosting service companies, you will, without a doubt, run across the term “bandwidth.” It is important to know your web hosting company’s bandwidth offering as well as the bandwidth your website will require. Why is it important? Let’s explore the reasons why.
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transmitted (bits/second) over a channel. It is often referred to as “data transfer rate.” A very simple analogy you can use to understand bandwidth and web traffic is to compare it to a set of highways and cars. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway and traffic is the number of cars on the highway. If you are the only car on a highway, you can travel much faster to your destination. However, if the highway is congested with traffic, then you will not be able to get to your destination as fast. Hence, the more space you have to move, the faster you can maneuver to your destination.
How much bandwidth do I need?
It is very important to understand how much bandwidth you will need when choosing a company to host your website. You can get an estimate of the amount of bandwidth your website will require if you know how large your pages will be and how many people you anticipate will be viewing your website on a daily or monthly basis.
Bandwidth can be measured if you add up the size of every image on any specific page and the size of the page’s HTML files, and multiply that sum by the amount of views for that page you expect per month. If you were to calculate this for each page you would know approximately how much bandwidth your entire site requires. If you are building a website for the first time you may want to contact a web hosting company for a consultation.
What happens to my website exceeds the bandwidth limit?
In some cases if your site exceeds its allotted amount of bandwidth per month, your site will default to a “site suspended” page. However, in some cases your site may not go down at all. Instead you may be sent a bill for overage costs just like cell phone companies do.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are many factors on why understanding hosting bandwidth is so important. You can save your company a lot of money and time if you do some quick research or ask the right questions. If you are looking for a reliable and secure hosting company, please call 919-341-8901 for a free consultation or fill out our inquiry form and one of our web design specialists will be in contact with you soon.
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