Related terms
- Bandwidth throttling
- May be used to limit the bandwidth usage when you are approaching your transfer limit.
- Disk space
- Used to hold all HTML files, graphics, scripts, and multi-media content which make up your website
We recommend
1&1 Web Hosting
Free: domains, marketing tools, search engine ad $$, free software. Must See Monthly Specials!
Kaspersky Personal Security Suite protects personal computers running Windows against the whole range of cyber threats.
Bandwidth
The meaning of the term bandwidth depends on the context. In web hosting it refers to the total amount of data transfered into and out of a hosting account. This amount of data includes web pages, email, and FTP transfers.
Each hosting account is allocated a certain amount of bandwidth per month. Common bandwidth allocations range from 3 GB for small personal sites up to 200 GB for large business systems.
How much bandwidth you need depends on your content and the amount of traffic your website receives. Web pages made up of text and a few pictures are small in size, but if you get many visitors every day you will need a lot of bandwidth.
If your website has many large downloadable files such as software, music or video, you may need extra bandwidth despite of fairly low traffic.
To calculate the amount of required bandwidth you need to take the size of your downloadable content and multiply it by the number of visitors you receive every month. Add to that the number of emails sent and received and other content such as FTP uploads.
The figure you come up with will be fairly accurate and will give you a bit of margin to play with. It is unlikely that every visitor to your site will download every file or view every page.
As you receive more traffic with your website growth you may need to increase your bandwidth allotment. It's better to plan ahead and get a larger hosting package rather than wait until you go over your limit.
Check with your host to see what their policy is in regards to exceeding your bandwidth. Most will allow you to go over by a certain amount and charge you a small fee for over-the-limit bandwidth.
Warning: Some hosts will shut down your site and demand that you upgrade your account before resuming service. It is always best to keep track of how much bandwidth you are using and anticipate when you need to upgrade.
If you would prefer not to upgrade you might be able to "throttle" traffic if you are approaching your monthly limit. Some hosts offer this service as a way of limiting incoming requests or excluding requests once a certain number has been reached.