What is Bandwidth 101
“Bandwidth is the amount of data your website can transfer to your user in a given time.”
What is bandwidth?
Bandwidth in web hosting, is the amount of data your website can transfer to your user in a given time. The most common bandwidth you’d see in most web hosting providers are calculated and sold as Gigabyte (GB). Fret not! There are still some company offer unlimited bandwidth; TheGigabit is one of them.
In a layman term, you can imagine bandwidth as the diameter of your water pipe.
“A large pipe can deliver more water at one time than a small pipe. That’s because a larger pipe has more capacity to do so. In the same way, having more bandwidth means that more website data can be moved at one time.”
Why do your website require bandwidth?
Bandwidth is part of an essential modules to enable your website to connect with your users. It also determines how fast you can deliver your content to users, especially during peak time. If you have a slow or overused all your data transfer, your website will not be able to reach your users – causing you lost of reputations and customer satisfactions.
Higher bandwidths allow website owners to have more dynamic features and content on their websites which can be more appealing to their visitors.
Where can I check my bandwidth?
For web hosting, our cPanel provides you information on this. Once you login your cPanel, you’ll notice the bandwidth usage as the picture below:
For other services such as Dedicated Server, you can request your bandwidth information from your hosting provider. It’ll be something as picture below:
How do I know the bandwidth amount that I required for my website?
The amount of bandwidth you’ll need depends on the number and size of your pages, the number of visitors your website gets, and the number of pages each visitor looks through.
If your site is new, or you don’t have a lot of content / visitors, then you won’t need to have a large amount of bandwidth. A basic shared hosting plan can be a great option for you even if it says “unlimited bandwidth”.
But, if your website already has a large number of users and you have a lot of graphics, images, video, audio, downloadable content, and visitors, then you’ll need more bandwidth.
The easiest way to tell how much bandwidth you’ll need for an existing site is to simply login to your web host account and look at the traffic reports on your cPanel. Nearly every web host provides these kinds of reports.
What will happened if my bandwidth is overused?
If you’re exceeding your monthly bandwidth allowance, then usually one of the three things happen: the host may suspend your website, they can charge you overage fees, or you will require to request upgrade your plan to the next package, so you have more bandwidth.
For more information on shared hosting, TheGigabit offers both Linux & Windows Web Hosting services:
Linux Web Hosting – https://thegigabit.com/hosting/linux-web-hosting/
Windows Web Hosting – https://thegigabit.com/hosting/windows-web-hosting/