What bandwidth (BW)means?
In web hosting Bandwidth (BW) is the extent of data a website can deliver at a time. The unit of Bandwidth is Gigabytes (GB). Some hosting companies offer “unlimited bandwidth” which is, in reality, hollow, though sounds too lucrative.
The concept of how bandwidth (BW) works becomes more clear if you think of it as the width of a bridge. More numbers of vehicles can pass across a wider bridge at a time than across a narrow bridge.
You will need 500 Kbps bandwidth if you want to browse the Web and check your email. However, if you plan on streaming HD videos or gaming online, you must think of getting a higher Bandwidth(BW). It is also used in measuring network congestion, poor performance, and slow data flow.
Types of bandwidth(BW)
When it comes to website BW, there are various types that you can choose from. Depending on the size and traffic of your website, you will need to select the appropriate type of bandwidth to ensure that your site runs smoothly. Here is a brief overview of the different types of bandwidth available:
1. Shared bandwidth:
This is the most common type of bandwidth (BW) and is best suited for small to medium-sized websites. With shared bandwidth, your website shares a certain amount of data with other sites on the same server.
2. Dedicated bandwidth:
If you have a large website with high traffic levels, dedicated BW is ideal. This type of BW gives your website its own separate data connection, ensuring that your site always has the resources it needs.
3. VPS bandwidth:
VPS (Virtual Private Server) bandwidth is ideal for medium to large-sized websites. With VPS bandwidth, your website is assigned its own resources on a server, giving you more control over how your site performs.
4. Cloud bandwidth:
Cloud bandwidth is perfect for large websites with high traffic levels. With this type of bandwidth, your website is hosted on a network of servers, providing you with unlimited BW.
Why is bandwidth important for a website?
If a site takes more than 3 seconds to load, it will lose 50% of its mobile visitors. Sites with fast load speed rank higher in Google searches.
Managing hosting costs is easy with increased BW, which makes it possible to develop more high-quality websites. What’s more, VPS (virtual private servers), cloud, and dedicated hosting plans often contain higher bandwidth that can be adjusted in order to best understand traffic fluctuations.
How to check bandwidth usage
As a website owner, you can check your BW by logging into your WordPress dashboard. To view your site’s resource activity, look for the section in the control panel that displays these details, which should be stored on the host or website. With the bandwidth breakdown, you can see trends related to your website’s bandwidth usage.
There are several ways to monitor your BW usage. One would be to check with your hosting provider to see if they have a way to gauge BW usage from the website’s admin channel. You can also check your live usage on certain web browsers.
Alternatively, We can use Google Chrome to check bandwidth use:-
- Step 1: right-click and “inspect this page” or press F12
- Step 2: Go to the side menu which will show some tabs
- Step 3: Navigate to the Network tab
- Step 4: reaching the network tab, refresh your browser page
- Step-5: In the lower right corner, the following metrics will be there regarding your website speeds:-
- Bytes transferred
- Requests made
- Size of each request
- Time each took (down to the millisecond)
How much bandwidth do I need?
You will have to select a plan with the right amount of bandwidth (BW) for your website. There’s no meaning to paying for more BW than you need. The extent of bandwidth will depend on the number and size of your pages, the number of visitors your website gets, and the number of pages each visitor visits.
For a new site with less content or visitors, then you won’t need a large amount of BW.
But, in the case of a website with more visitors and a lot of graphics, images, audio, video, etc you’ll need more bandwidth.
To have an idea of how much BW you need simply log in to your web host account and look at the traffic reports on your cPanel.
However, you will be happy to know that any web hosting company normally does not shut down your site if the BW exceeds. They’ll inform you and make changes to increase your resources.
Factors affecting the extent of bandwidth use
The following are the factors:-
Monthly Visitors: Have an estimate of monthly visitors for your website. This You can do by using Google Analytics or WordPress.
Pageviews: Number of pages the visitors open in the course of their visit to your website.
Average Daily Visitors: The total monthly visitors/30.
Average Page Views: Total page viewed/Numbers of visitors
Webpage size: Using GTmetrix, Northcutt, or Pingdom You can know the size of the web pages your website or blog has.
Average File Size: Total file size/number of files.
Average Page Size: Average size of your web page.
Now find your BW requirement using the following formula:
Your Bandwidth need = [(Average Page Views x Average Page Size x Average Daily Visitors) + (Average Download per day x Average File Size) ] x30 (Number of days in a month) x Redundant Factor
Redundant Factor: The safety factor is a measure to account for the extra traffic at peak hours. When the safety factor is balanced with the Pagerank, you can expect an average of 1.5 searches during peak periods. In case the previous calculation was confusing, you can use some online website bandwidth calculators to get an estimate. I recommend reading this article from Google, which includes tips for what to consider before uploading a video. YouTube is a good source of videos, so it would be worth investigating how they handle video uploads.
What Happens if I Exceed My Bandwidth?
If you exceed your monthly limit, then usually one of the three things happens:
- the host may suspend your website,
- they can charge you over usage fees,
- they simply auto-upgrade your plan to the next version, so you have more bandwidth.
How to increase bandwidth?
After all sorts of curtailment, if you run out of bandwidth and get knocked at your door by the hosting provider on your door, upgrading to a bigger plan may be an option because you will have other work to do. You can not afford to remain mentally restless around the clock.
How to reduce the use of bandwidth?
In order to get better performance on your website you can either upgrade your plan or can make some bandwidth free by reducing its non-essential use. This can be done in the following ways:-
1. Lightweight theme
A lightweight theme for your website requires less bandwidth and resources, which will help your site load faster.
2. Cache
A good cache system may come in handy in reducing bandwidth load on your website. A great WordPress option is the W3 Total Cache system, which can reduce loads on your website. Your web host might also provide a cache plugin that could benefit you.
3. Content delivery network (CDN)
CDN is an effective way to reduce bandwidth load if you get visitors from all across the world. In it, the cache version of your files is kept stored on different servers, across many countries.
4. Avoid nulled themes/plugins
Nulled themes/plugins may have viruses or malware which consume more bandwidth of your website. So avoid the use of nulled themes/plugins.
5. Routine updating
It can sometimes detect more consumption of bandwidth by themes and plugins. It can be fixed.
6. Use of GZip
GZip can help in reducing the use of bandwidth by compressing the files (images, videos, HTML, Javascript, and CSS).
7. Combining javascript & CSS files
Responding to more HTTP requests means more use of bandwidth. You can reduce HTTP requests by combining the Javascript and CSS files. First, all external Javascripts can be combined into single files, and the same for CSS files also. Now combine the Javascript and add CSS into a single CSS stylesheet file.
Is too much bandwidth good?
Avoid using too much BW for loading videos, playing games, and streaming. Excessive bandwidth usage can lead to the corruption of your data. Make sure you only use the amount that is necessary for your needs.
When you’re looking for Bandwidth, be sure to consult your Internet Service Provider. They’ll have the information you need, and explain what’ll happen if you go over it.
Internet bandwidth
The fastest internet is available at 10 Mbps. The user needs to decide if they need a low bandwidth or high bandwidth depending on the surfing habits of the customer.
However, you will need a broadband connection with at least 3 Mbps of BW to watch videos in good quality. If you are unable to do this, it might be time to upgrade your ISP or buy a new modem.
The more you pay for the internet, the faster it becomes. Various factors affect how quickly your internet is, like what type of equipment you use and how far away you live from the provider.
For example, let us consider the case of a railway reservation center with four counters. Only four people can book a reservation simultaneously. The counters could be accessed simultaneously by only five different people.
If your website is receiving more traffic than it can handle, you might experience longer loading times and your site might go down.
In case a website is slower or has low BW, it might be difficult to access during periods of heavy traffic. With more booking counters, booking can be done faster and the moving forward of people will be smoother. If there are higher bandwidth speeds, the site loads faster without any issues.
- First, how to calculate the video file size? To calculate, you need,
- Time duration of the video (length – 10 seconds, 2 minutes).
- Frames per second (fps) of the video.
- Amount of horizontal and vertical pixels.
- The Bit Depth of the image is the number of bits per pixel. More pixels imply more colors in the video.
How to save on web hosting costs?
You should select a web host that can provide the bandwidth your website needs. If your website doesn’t have high bandwidth requirements, you may be able to save money by choosing a less expensive web host. But in case your website does have high BW requirements, it is better to choose a web host that can meet those needs. Otherwise, your website may experience slow load times or downtime.
To determine your website’s BW requirements, start by estimating the amount of traffic your website receives. Then, determine the average size of each page on your website. Finally, multiply those two numbers together to arrive at an estimate of your website’s monthly BW usage.
Bandwidtth=Amount of traffic X Average size of each page
Be sure to read reviews of potential web hosts before making your final decision.
Unlimited bandwidth hosting offer
Looking for a plan with unlimited bandwidth. But in reality, no such thing as unlimited bandwidth exists. These are eyewash and misleading.
This sounds like a good deal, but it is complex. Unlimited BW means your website can receive an unlimited amount of data, but the server speed is limited. This is termed “unlimited bandwidth” because the websites on shared hosting never exceed the bandwidth allotted to them.
Tips for choosing a website host
- Choosing a website host can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. The following tips will help you select the best hosting option for your website:– consider your website’s purpose and anticipated traffic levels when selecting a host
- to determine the type of hosting that will best suit your needs (shared, dedicated, VPS, etc.)
- research different hosts and compare features and pricing
- be sure to read the fine print before selecting a host!
Comparison of Different Web Hosting plans
| Host | Read More | Price from / mo. | Sites | Traffic (mo.) | Disk Space |
| A2 Hosting | (review) | $2.99 | 1 | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Bluehost | (review) | $2.75 | 1 | Unmetered | 50 GB |
| Cloudways | (review) | $10 | 1 | 1 TB | 25 GB |
| DreamHost | (review) | $2.59 | 1 | Unmetered | 50 GB |
| Flywheel | (review) | $13 | 1 | ~ 5k visits/mo. | 5 GB |
| GoDaddy | (review) | $2.99 | 1 | Unmetered | 100 GB |
| GreenGeeks | (review) | $2.95 | 1 | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| HostGator | (review) | $2.75 | 1 | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Hostinger | (review) | $1.99 | 1 | 100 GB | 30 GB |
| InMotion | (review) | $2.29 | 2 | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Kinsta | (review) | $29.17 | 1 | ~ 25k visits/mo. | 10 GB |
| SiteGround | (review) | $2.99 | 1 | ~ 10k visits/mo. | 10 GB |
| WP Engine | (review) | $23 | 1 | ~ 25k visits/mo. | 10 GB |
Conclusion
Finally understanding bandwidth in web hosting is very important. I hope this article helped you better understand what is bandwidth, how it works, and why it is important to consider while choosing the right host for your website.
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