Do you want to reserve hosting for your website, or have you previously reserved hosting, and noticed that bandwidth is one of the factors affecting the hosting characteristics, then you searched on the Internet for an explanation of bandwidth? If you want to know what bandwidth is and how important it is in the performance of hosted sites, as well as your website’s need for it, then this article is for you.
We can say briefly that bandwidth is the amount of data or the volume of data that is transferred from one point to another within a computer network or Internet connection in a specific period of time, but in this article we will learn fully for beginners what bandwidth is and how it works for For website owners?
What is Bandwidth?
We can define Bandwidth in the world of websites as the amount of data that a website uses or needs during a specific period of time. Bandwidth can be affected by the amount of traffic that comes to a site as well as the resources the site has.
If you are a website owner , the two basic elements for determining bandwidth are: the volume of resources and the number of visitors. The bandwidth used by a website is affected by the size and number of resources the website has. Images, files, text, videos, or other types of files and code can consume resources, and this usage can increase based on the frequency of downloads. So the more resources are consumed, the more bandwidth is needed for the site.
When you purchase new hosting, different hosting companies provide you with many features in the plans they offer you, and the amount of bandwidth is one of the most important characteristics that you need to know when choosing a hosting company or determining the plan that is appropriate for you, because this will fundamentally affect the performance of your sites. Users.
What does bandwidth mean for web hosting?
When you preview a hosting, the bandwidth in the hosting plan means the transfer of data (i.e. the content on the site and site visitors) between your website, users, and the Internet in a certain period of time. For example, if you choose a high bandwidth, this guarantees you that a greater number of Visitors will be able to use your website at the ideal speed, and browse it quickly and without problems.
How is bandwidth measured?
Bandwidth is measured in bits per second (bps), but today there are networks with a large bandwidth, so it can be measured in megabits per second (Mbps), gigabit per second (Gbps), or terabit per second (Tbps).
- K = kilo = 1,000 bits
- M = Mega = 1,000 Kilo = 1,000,000 Bits
- G = Giga = 1,000 Mega = 1,000,000,000 Bits
- T = Tera = 1,000 GB = 1,000,000,000,000 Bits
The amount of bandwidth you need to do good web browsing depends on what you want to do.
For example:
- To conduct a message conversation you need a bandwidth of 1000 bits, or one kilobit per second.
- Voice chat, need 56 Kbps
- The video needs 1 Mbps
- HDX quality video needs 7 Mbps
These are examples only, and of course these resources are consumed at a time, and can be used more than once by the same visitor.
Read also: What are website hosting? A comprehensive explanation for beginners
How does bandwidth work in transferring data?
We can say that the work of bandwidth is similar to the amount of water flowing through a pipe. The larger the size of the pipe, the greater the amount of water flowing at one time. With the same idea, bandwidth works: the greater the bandwidth of the data connection, the more data that can be sent and received within one second.
Certainly, the website owner can pay the hosting company in exchange for increased bandwidth, as the greater the bandwidth, the higher the cost. Certainly, the greater the number of visitors to your site, the higher the amount of data transfer you will need, and the greater the content of your site, the more bandwidth you will need.
In general, bandwidth does not generally affect data speed, but low bandwidth will not be able to transfer large data packets quickly and will suffer from slow loading of site data.
How is Bandwidth used in a website?
A website’s Bandwidth usage depends on a number of factors, including the media files on your site, the site’s design, the coding or code your site is programmed to, and, to some extent, even the content on your site, with the number of visitors and the pages each user visits playing an important role. In determining the bandwidth.
For example, if all users or visitors enter your site, more pages will be loaded and therefore we need more bandwidth. Conversely, if all visitors leave your site, the amount of bandwidth used will decrease.
How to determine Bandwidth when purchasing hosting?
When purchasing hosting, it is necessary to determine the amount of bandwidth required, even if it is an approximate or average amount of bandwidth that your site needs, because if you purchase a plan with a lower bandwidth, and you suddenly have many visits, all hosting resources will be consumed, and your site may stop working.
Also, on the other hand, if you purchase a plan with a higher bandwidth, and it later turns out that you do not need it and your site does not have visits, then you will have spent money unnecessarily. We do not advise you to choose a high hosting plan with advanced capabilities without the need for those resources or those features.
A study on determining the Bandwidth quantity for a site
We will give you a hypothetical case study of a site where we want to determine the amount of Bandwidth required in the hosting plan, and based on that we can determine the amount more realistically.
First, we can summarize the most important factors that you need to know in the beginning as follows:
1- The amount of resources your site needs.
What resources does your site need? Do you have large texts and audio recordings or videos and courses? Do you have an online store with many products or a simple blog?
First, you need to determine the expected total size of your site’s pages, because this is the main factor in determining resources. The larger the resources, the greater the bandwidth.
2- The number of visitors to your site per month
. One of the important things that must be taken into consideration when determining the bandwidth is also the expectation of the number of people who will visit your site per month. Will you start with modest marketing of your site during the testing period, or will you launch paid marketing and advertising campaigns? As we said, the number of visitors is the influencer. The second is the bandwidth consumption of the hosting.
3- The average number of page views per site visitor.
The number of page views of your site, which differs from the number of visitors, also affects bandwidth consumption. One visitor may view 10 pages of your site, or 5, less, or more. When making network bandwidth calculations, consider the average page views per site visitor.
In general, you cannot accurately calculate the bandwidth your site needs each month, but based on the following information, you can predict the required bandwidth size:
- Average page size
- Average number of visitors per month
- Average page views per visitor
Then, after determining these factors, you perform the following equation:
Bandwidth = average page size * average number of monthly visitors * average pages viewed per visitor
For example, if you have about 5,000 monthly visitors to your site, with each visitor viewing about 4 pages (let’s assume each page is about 5 MB), then the amount of bandwidth your site needs will be according to the previous equation:
Bandwidth = 5MB * 5000 * 4 = 1,00,000MB (100GB).
Note: This equation is not considered an accurate way of describing your site’s needs. For example, there may be a sudden increase in visits or a decrease in some periods, and thus data consumption changes accordingly.
You can also use Bandwidth Calculator to roughly calculate the bandwidth you need.
It is worth noting that there are other important factors to determine the bandwidth size, including, for example:
- Will you be running multiple websites on a single server host?
- Does your site contain many high-resolution videos?
- What is the future growth of your site?
In short, the equation is that the more people visit your site, the more bandwidth you need, and if the number of visitors to your site changes up and down throughout the month in an unstable manner, then in this case we advise you to deal with cloud hosting that charges you for consumption .
What bandwidths do the hosting provide?
Hosting companies offer two types of bandwidth within their plans:
1- Unaccounted bandwidth – Metered Bandwidth,
where the bandwidth provided by the hosting company is specified, and when the permissible limit is exceeded, the excess is calculated if the data transfer limit is 20 terabytes, and once you exceed this limit, the hosting company will bill you for the increase. Or stop the service (in the case of shared hosting, for example).
Unmetered Bandwidth
Here the bandwidth provided by the hosting company is unlimited and is not measured, as you pay the cost of the hosting plan and use the bandwidth as much as you need, and you are charged at the end of the month for what was consumed only.
Read also: What is a VPS? Why is it better than shared hosting?
Also, you cannot generally determine your site’s requirements accurately. You can use a site for a month, to find out your average need, and then determine the amount of bandwidth that suits your site. For example:
If you have an e-commerce site and have a large number of visitors, you will need a high bandwidth. For example, if you have 1,000 visitors a day, and your average page size is 100 KB, then your average bandwidth need is at least 8.5 GB per month.
For example, if you own a popular blog, have about 20,000 visitors per month, your page size is 50 KB, and an average of 5 page views per visitor, then you will need a bandwidth of about 5 GB per month.
On the other hand, if you want to create a new, small, good blog that works well, a broker estimates your need for bandwidth at 1 GB per month, and thus when you reach an appropriate vision of how much bandwidth you need, you can choose the appropriate hosting company and determine the required plan.
Rationalization of bandwidth consumption
For website owners, it is very important to pay attention to the bandwidth used, because it affects the site’s loading speed and efficiency, and thus the user experience it provides. If the bandwidth is exhausted, your entire site may stop, as in this image.
You can also rationalize the consumption of used resources through:
- Compress HTTP, CSS and JavaScript files
- Find external sources or storage for photos, videos and large files
- Work on caching and content delivery network to store static content on closer servers
Thus, you can use some effective methods that help you reduce the bandwidth consumption of your site, and also help you increase the speed of your WordPress site .
Conclusion
We can say that bandwidth (or Bandwidth) is one of the most important criteria in hosting your site, which you need to specify well and rely on a reliable service provider to provide the amount of data transfer that suits your site’s needs.
From the beginning, when choosing the hosting you want, you must determine how much bandwidth you will need for your site. Depending on your expectations about the number of monthly visitors to your site, what is the size of your pages, and what is the average views per visitor, and the equation will always remain the same, as the consumption increases, your need for more bandwidth will increase.
