|
|
Web Hosting Data Transfer: How Much Is Too Much?
Bandwidth in its simplest terms refers to the amount of data that flows across a network wire in a given time period. For most web hosting providers, that time period is measured in a month. Web hosting providers are charged a certain amount per month or per year for an allocated amount of bandwidth from backbone providers and wholesale data centers. That cost is then passed on to the consumer in the form of web hosting plans.
How much bandwidth will my website use?
With so much variation among web hosting companies, it can sometimes be difficult to know how much bandwidth your website will need. So, how much is a gigabyte of bandwidth anyway? Let's put it in perspective. If an average web page, images and all is 50 kilobytes in size, your website could be viewed 20,000 times! For the average hobby website, that is more than enough. Let's further put that 20,000 in perspective. If each visitor to your website viewed an average of 4 pages per month, it would still represent over 5,000 unique visitors to your website every month.
Beware of bandwidth usage when offering file downloads
While offering simple web pages doesn't use up much bandwidth, the same can't be said about downloading files. If you plan on allowing people to download music files, pdf files, flash files, or video files, you can eat up bandwidth in a hurry even with a relatively small number of people visiting your website. If your website offers an adobe .pdf file that is 1 megabyte in size, with one gigabyte of bandwidth, you will only be able to serve up one thousand downloads. This does not including the html needed to get people to download the pdf in the first place.
Video files eat up even more space. A one megabyte video file represents only seconds of video. For a half hour presentation, your video file could easily be over two hundred megabytes in size! At that size, one gigabyte would only allow you to offer five downloads to your visitors. What you plan to do with your website most definitely will affect how much monthly bandwidth you anticipate needing.
Overselling bandwidth is common in the web hosting industry
Because more people use only a fraction of their allotted bandwidth per month, most web hosting providers price their plans knowing that most people will only use a fraction of the resources available to them. In fact, with most companies, if you did use the maximum bandwidth available to you each month, you would most likely be shut down. If you go with a shared hosting account, your website can be hosted with hundreds or thousands of other websites. If your website starts to use a significant portion of the server's resources, you may find them pulling the plug on your website. If you know your website is going to need significant resources, you should probably consider getting yourself a dedicated server.
Knowing what you plan to do will allow you to know how much you need
By knowing what you plan to do with your hosting account, you can have a pretty good idea of how much bandwidth you're going to need. If you anticipate that you will be needing to serve lots of multimedia including video, music and large amounts of flash powered pages, you may need to consider going with a dedicated server. If your website is just starting out and you have little money and no real idea of how much bandwidth you're going to need, pick a company that gives you more than you think you'll need at a reasonable price. Make sure you also find out how much they will charge you for any bandwidth you use above and beyond what comes in your hosting package. If it is one dollar per megabyte and you've already exceeded a twenty gigabyte bandwidth limit, changes are, you'll get one hefty bill at the end of the month. When shopping around and looking at bandwidth, keep the overage cost in mind as well and you'll do fine.
This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting company that strives to make it easy to setup and maintain your website. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you link back to my website from this resource box.
Web Hosting: Shared or Dedicated - Which Should You Choose?
Before you begin your search for a web host you should first determine whether you need shared web hosting or dedicated web hosting.
40,000 New Blogs Are Started Daily - How Your Web Hosting Business Can Cash in
The fact that an estimated 40,000 new blogs are being started daily should be of great interest to anybody already in the web hosting business or intending to go into it. Especially those planning to go into the business as affiliates or as resellers because this group of online entrepreneurs are in a very good position to cash in quickly on this amazing growth rate of blogs with hardly any investment necessary.
Good Web Hosting ? What Is It?
With hundreds of web hosting companies to choose from today it can be hard to know which ones are actually worth using. Below is a guide of things to look for in a web host:
Free Web Hosting - Why Might It Be A Bad Idea
When talking about free anything the legitimate question that first pops into your mind is why pay when you can get it free? And as for free web hosting there are plenty of places to get it from. As spread as they are, if you are not a stranger to the whole Internet experience, you might even have a web site hosted for free. Are you satisfied with your provider? Is it everything you wanted? Probably not. Anyway it is true that is comes with no cost and no other aggravations? or are there any?
Best Website Hosting is One Thats Reliable
If you are looking for a solid, reliable web host, it's important to look online for recommendations of reliable web hosting companies. There are a few big names in web hosting that you can feel comfortable trusting your hosting to.
Choosing the Right Web Host
So you've decided about your website design and now you are ready to have your website hosted!
Top 6 Ways to Promote Your Web Hosting Business Part 2
Here are the following three methods that can help you improve your web hosting business. These three are targeted towards the service you provide:
Steps to Becoming a Web Host Reseller
You've decided to get a reseller web hosting account to resell web space. What now? Here's a step-by-step guide.
How to Choose the Web Hosting Provider?
1. Does the company offer telephone support or 24/7 email support?
Unique Features that Leading Web Hosts are Now Offering
Some web hosts are offering more than others for the same price or even for a lower price. There is no denying the fact that as competition increases amongst web hosting services, many are looking for ways and means to stand out and be different from their competitors. The result is that web hosting service standards are constantly on the rise and webmasters are constantly enjoying amazing new features that were previously not there. Let us take a look at a few that some web hosts are now regularly offering to their clients.
Configuring DynDNS.org in Linux via DDClient
Most Internet service providers do not give you static IP addresses (without paying more for them), which makes hosting your own Server (Games, FTP, Web) a pain in the butt. There is however a means to create a relatively static looking connection by using a the wonderful service provided by DynDNS. They allow you to get a subdomain off one of their many domains that will automatically forward to your dynamic IP address.
The #1 Factor New Webmasters Forget to Consider when Choosing a Web Hosting Plan
The Problem
Dedicated Server vs. Co-location Web Hosting
So - you know shared hosting no longer cuts it, and your single office connection is not enough to host a web server - so which is best, leasing a dedicated server or buying your own server and co-locating it someone's data center? Difference For those that are unsure of the difference, here it is in a nutshell. When you co-locate, you are simply renting space within someone else's facility to store your own server or servers. It's like a high tech gym locker that you are renting all or part of to house your servers. You either ship or deliver your server to your provider. Additional services provided with co-location vary from host to host but it certainly won't include the actual server. With a dedicated server you are getting all the features of co-location, plus the actual web server itself. Which is better? While it certainly depends on your particular needs, and there are excellent situations for both the dedicated server option is quickly becoming a better choice in more and more cases. If you already own a web server, or cluster that you prefer to use, then obviously co-location may be your best choice. If you are considering buying new equipment and shipping it off for co-location - please reconsider. The prices and equipment available in dedicated hosting these days are outstanding plus relieve you of the burden of hardware. Most hosts keep identical spare parts on hand for the types of servers used and are quick to react if something fails. Depending on your arrangement with a colocation deal hardware failure could mean paying to have a server shipped back (or you drive to get it), having it fixed yourself then sending it back to the data center. Please refer following web sites for useful resources related to web site hosting: http://www.vipwh.com http://www.thehostingguide.com
Choosing a Hosting Service: A Checklist for Business Owners
For a website to appear on the Internet, you require a "server" that is usually provided by a web hosting company. Hosting companies are paid monthly, quarterly or yearly. Some companies come with guarantees, too. Recommendations from other business owners and web designers are excellent ways to find a good hosting service.
7 Key Points to Consider When Choosing a Web Host
With literally thousands of web hosting companies in the industry all vieing for your business, carefully consider these key points to ensure you make the most well informed decision possible.
Personal Web Hosting ? Free Or Cheap?
After you have spent some time and creativity on designing your personal web site now it's time to publish it on the World Wide Web for all to see it.
Server Host: Where Does My Web Page Go?
For those of you who don't really understand where or how your web page is sitting on your hosting sever, this is a basic over view of how it works.
Hosting Options for an Ecommerce Web Site
Deciding how to host your ecommerce Web site and what approach to take can be daunting. There are several approaches available, each with different advantages and disadvantages.
The Big Secret of Fabulous and Mediocre Web Site Hosting Companies
Most web site hosting services like the one you're probably using right now, provide you with space on which you can host your web site. These mediocre web site hosting companies will even help you set up your own email addresses and provide you with the ability to run your own scripts and programs.
Monitor Your Web Site for Downtime
For those in the Internet business the availability of their web site is a major concern. The cost of downtime for web businesses can amount to $10,000 an hour. And this is without counting the losses caused by missed opportunities and lost sales. Losses in image and credibility these businesses suffer because eventual downtime is even harder to quantify.