How Much Bandwidth Does Your Website Need ? Factors to Consider

In the context of web hosting, the term bandwidth means the quantity of data which is being transferred to and from your account. Outgoing data includes email, web page and file transfers, while incoming data includes FTP uploads, FTP requests, as well as requests for web pages.

Each month, web hosting providers allocate a specific amount of bandwidth to each hosting account. Small personal sites usually require a bandwidth of about 3GB, while large business systems could use up to 200GB.

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How to determine your bandwidth requirement

To find out how much bandwidth you need, you can start by evaluating your website content, and the amount of traffic you receive on a daily basis. Sites which are mainly text-based and have a few images are usually small in size.

However, if these sites receive thousands of hits daily, then a lot of bandwidth is required. Websites which contain downloadable files like video, music or software are much larger. Even if the traffic to such sites is relatively low, they will still need to have a large amount of bandwidth.

The best way of determining your bandwidth requirement is to multiply the number of visitors to your site per month with the size of the content which can be downloaded. Add to that figures such as the number of FTP uploads, as well as the number of emails received and sent. This calculation will give you a good idea of your bandwidth requirements.

If you want to get technical, here’s a simple formula you can use to calculate your bandwidth needs:

Bandwidth Needed = (Average Page Views) x (Average Page Size) x (Average Daily Visitors) x (30) x (Redundant Factor)

  • Average Page Views = Average number of pages viewed per visitor.
  • Average Page Size = Average size of your web page.
  • Average Daily Visitors = Total number of monthly visitors divided by 30.
  • Redundant Factor = A safety factor ranged from 1.3 – 1.8.

If you have a website that allows downloads, here’s the formula for you:

Bandwidth needed = [(Average Page Views) x (Average Page Size) x (Average Daily Visitors) + (Average Downloads Per Day) x (Average File Size)] x (30) x (Redundant Factor)

  • Average Page Views = Average number of pages viewed per visitor.
  • Average Page Size = Average size of your web page.
  • Average Daily Visitors = Total number of monthly visitors divided by 30.
  • Redundant Factor = A safety factor ranged from 1.3 – 1.8.
  • Average File Size = Total file size divided by the number of files.
  • Average Downloads Per Day = Total number of downloads per month divided by 30.

Here’s a helpful hint: You can find most of this information from your analytics program. 

Additional bandwidth

As your site grows and traffic increases, you might need to get some extra bandwidth. Therefore, instead of waiting until the limit is exceeded, it is advisable to think ahead and arrange for a larger hosting package from your provider.

Find out about the policy of your web host concerning the exceeding of bandwidth. There are those who will automatically shut down your site until you upgrade your account. Others will allow you to exceed your bandwidth limit by a specific amount. It is always advisable to monitor the amount of bandwidth you are using so as to know when upgrading is necessary.

Traffic ‘throttling’

When you are about to reach your monthly limit but you don’t wish to upgrade, some web hosts allow you to ‘throttle’ your traffic. This service enables you to limit incoming requests once they reach a specific number.

There are different ways of throttling. You could have a certain idle time between requests. As a result, this prevents too many incoming requests from arriving at the same time. The other alternative is to place a limit on data transfer during a specific time period. You could also fix the speed of data transfers at a particular level.

However, for people who rely on traffic for their business, throttling might not be a good idea. If your pages load slowly or if your visitors cannot access information, they will get frustrated and click away from your site. If the aim of your site is primarily to offer information, you could use throttling to keep your budget at a manageable level.

About Author: Charles Mburugu usually writes about blogging tips and internet marketing. Currently, he is contributing to Web Hosting Secret Revealed, an awesome blog which offers great Hosting Reviews such as Jerry’s Hostgator Review.