Hi I am building a website. Please bare with me I am a novice.

My site is, when finished probably going to be 10 megabytes. My current web hosting company offers me only 10 gig data transfer a month. So assuming that I get users come on to my site and look at every page, this means I would only be able to get 1024 users a month.

Equation: 10240mb data transfer a month divided by 10 megabytes per each user = 1024 users just in that one month.

My question is... how could I increase that number without paying the ridiculous fees to increase my data transfer allowance? Even if I upgraded to the "premium" plan they have available, it would only add another 10 gig data transfer monthly. Still only increasing the number of users each month to 2048 users seeing every page.

The route I was looking to go was setting up windows server 2003 on my computer and pointing my dot com there. Could I do this?

Would I be able to get 10,000 traffic hits a day, could I get a million? I don’t want to worry about monthly data transfer limits or traffic limits. My computer is a pretty good one. 2 gig athalon, 1 gig memory, 200mb hardrive and my internet connection is cable modem with uploads at 100kbps and downloads at 500kbps, I think.

Would my cable modem company get suspicious or cut me off for doing this... would my cable modem be able to support such hits, would my computer?

Sorry for so many questions, but I would really appreciate any wisdom anyone might have to offer. Should I use windows server, is it hard to set up, would I be able to point my existing dot com to my computer through Windows Server 2003. Should I go some other route besides Windows Server 2003?

Any information is greatly appreciated

Please Help,
Thank you much in advance

Dom

First off, based on statistics, people wouldn't go through all the pages at one sitting. 10mb is a lot of information to grasp. People usually do an average of between 10 to 15 pages.

If you think that their offering does not meet your requirement, you could opt for another provider which does. There are quite a number of hosts around and I believe that some would meet your needs.

Serving off your cable modem is one thing. Technically speaking you need to look at your upstream speed as that is their download speed. On the legal aspect, you probably would want to check with your ISP to see if they allow running a web server behind their network. Most do not allow. So far I understand that only a few in the UK which does allow. Yes, if your provider does not allow and finds out, you could be looking at your account being terminated and in some cases be charge in court.

There are many different types of operating systems which can act as web servers, these includes Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Unix, Mac and so on. Use one OS which you are familiar with and which is able to handle your contents. For example, if you do ASP, you need to use Windows.

Would I be able to get 10,000 traffic hits a day,
Not on a cable connection.

2 gig athalon, 1 gig memory, 200mb hardrive
200mb hard drive is small these days :D

Would my cable modem company get suspicious or cut me off for doing this...
Perhaps... Check with them. Most Business connections will allow mail and www servers running on it.

I would suggest you go with a small package and upgrade as your need arises with your current provider or another provider. I seriously doubt you will be using a lot of data transfer to begin with.

was just wondering what OS you have installed in that 200 MB hard drive

You're not going to get each visitor looking at anything like 10MB of your data - apart from anything else, it would take an average dial-up user over 40 minutes to download all that....

A more realistic calculation would be to assume that most people see 3 or 4 pages on average (a lot will only look at the home page).

Assuming you've designed them to be efficient each page might be say 50k on average - so that's more like 200k a user, giving you a couple of thousand users per DAY for 10GB/mo.

So, don't worry about it. Keep an eye on the stats, but 10GB is harder to use up than you think (unless you're offering CD ISO image downloads or similar).

the hits are already building
someone who runs a similiar site gets 100,000 - 500,00 plus hits a day if not more

heydom.com

this is the site

Ahh....Hey dom indeed. I don't think your isp would be at all happy if you tried to do this, nor would any host :-)

Don't worry too much about the exceeding the 10gb bandwidth limit for now. Unless if you are hosting downloads and streaming media, the traffic level would not suddenly jump from 0 to 10,000 visitors a day any time soon.

One of the hardest thing for a new website is building traffic and creating brand awareness.

We all think our websites would be a hit at the offset and worry about things like you do. I understand that but usually that does not reflect reality which is usually not as kind as that.

You may take like 6 to 24 months before you hit your 10gb limit if you host standard websites contents.

Of course, like I say, if you do host massive download files and they are hot illegal tickets then yes, it might exceed your 10gb limit in no time.

Don't worry too much about the exceeding the 10gb bandwidth limit for now. Unless if you are hosting downloads and streaming media, the traffic level would not suddenly jump from 0 to 10,000 visitors a day any time soon.

He wont have to worry about exceeding bandwidth at all, because hopefully pretty soon he will be in jail where he belongs for offering links to where movies can be downloaded, now the really stupid thing is including your domain in the movie titles, and you probably have your information on your domain whois also right?

tsk tsk tsk.. soon enough..

Oops, I did not see that :) Yeah, if that is the case then yeah, it would last that long..

One thing I don't understand is why people want to finance and host illegal contents for free ? You just do not gain anything apart from a front page cover in the papers for the offense and several years all expenses paid accomodation and meals at the local prison and a blackmark on your record for life. I know if you do it for money since money is the motivating factor but for free is something which I cannot understand.

Note : I am not condoning the right to charge for illegal contents. I don't condone to any illegal activities in the first place and I am a sucker for legal contents and paying for them.