Hey again everyone -

So the reason I was looking into HiSpeed and others (And, again, if you've used HiSpeed, please give me some feedback :>) is because I beleive I need a boatload of bandwith. I am new to the webmastering biz, however, so maybe I'm wrong on my math. Any help here is greatly appreciated!

Here's the detailed info on how I'm figuring how much bandwith I'll need:

Let's say I get 6,000 hits per day for a month, and on average, those 6,000 hits visit 5 pages in my site. For a full month I would then have (6,000*5*30) 900,000 page views.

Now, say due to graphics each page is 70 KB (I'm just counting the graphics on the page and the HTML, not the background graphics since most of the time they're not loaded 100 times) so each of those 900,000 page views rings up 70 KB. That gives me 63,000,000 KB per month, correct?

63,000,000/1000 gives me 63,000 MB per month.

63,000/1000 gives me 63 GB per month.

That's where I came up with the 63 GB number.

Now, if my site grows, and I end up getting 10,000 hits per day with 10 page views per day, my GB would move up to a whopping (10,000 hits*10 views*30 days*70KB) 210,000,000 KB or (/1000/1000) 210 GB per month.

Am I totally off base with my bandwith or do I really need that much bandwith per month? All help is greatly, greatly appreciated and I'm very sorry if this post is very confusing, I tried my best to simplfy it.

Thanks so much!

-Scott
http://www.wrasslin.com/nomercy/
http://www.wrasslin.com/wm2k/

That measurement is reasonably close. The final figure will be slightly reduced because if you use the same graphics consistently throughout the site then the graphics are just called from the user's browser's cache. If each of the 5 pages you mention has different photos however then obviously your measurements would stand.

I say the final figure will be reduced because you should be dividing by 1024 instead of 1000 (it does make a slight bit of difference).

So..... 63,000,000 KBs gives you about 61,523.5 MBs/month. And divide that by 1,000 and that gives you 61 GBs a month.

The trouble is, no virtual host (realistically) will give you that much bandwidth because you're essentially using a very large portion of the bandwidth they are allocated by their upstream provider, so that means they have to rely on other sites they host using less bandwidth, or they start to have to pay extra costs out of their own pocket (because of your extra use). And with bandwidth costing between $4-15/GB (depending on who you go with) then the costs start to add up.

At your usage rate you'd have to seriously consider either using a dedicated server or coming to an arrangement with your host to use the extra bandwidth in return for other streams of revenues (like ad banners, text links, etc. to your host).

Hope this gives you some idea.

Thanks so much for the quick and detailed reply.

That's what I was afraid of, that my site had grown to such a high level it was going to make it impossible at this point to move from the guys who are hosting me now and get my own domain.

If anyone has any suggestions on what I should/could do and realizing that a dedicated server at over $500 a month isn't a true possibility (And even at that point I don't think I'd have the bandwith I'd need) is there anything I really can do if I want to move to my own domain.

Thanks again for everyones help.

You can get relatively decent dedicated servers from around $99/month and upwards... Look at the Dedicated/Co-lo forum and you'll find plenty of discussion on 4webspace.com; alternatively do a search and you should turn up some dedicated providers who aren't that expensive.

The very best of luck.

P.S. I forgot to mention in my other post : if you need any further help on bandwidth you can always check http://www.hosthelp.com

Even though you're answer wasn't what I was hoping for (I wanted you to tell me I was only using 6.3 Gigs not 63, but I guess I knew better) your help has been terrific and I really appreciate it.

I guess my next stop is the Dedicated forum and a post there. I will also check out the website you refered me to.

Thanks again.

-Scott

WestWing, it seems to me that maybe there's some error in your calculation. You refer to 6000 hits, then use those hits to represent 6000 visitors? My question to you is: is the 6000 the number of people who visit your site each day? Or is it the number of hits really?

Based on your answer, we can probably come up with a calculation.

When I said 6,000 hits, I was refering to 6,000 unique vistors. As in, 6,000 different people per day. So, it's likely the actual number of "hits" would be higher (People visiting twice a day) the number of page views (In my scenario, 5 pages on average per day) of 900,000 wouldn't change too much because those repeat visitors wouldn't visit a large number of pages.

Does that help you out any? I know it's a bit confusing but I really appreciate your help so I'm trying to make this is easy as possible.

Thanks!

-Scott

In that case, I am afraid your calculation was very close to the real figure. Pretty high figure for shared hosting.

Liek BC said, your best bet would be your own server (if you can manage it yourself) or get a managed server.

Personally, I would look at reducing the page size a little bit, like optimising graphics so that they are smaller. e.g. reduce your page size by 10% equates to a 10% reduction in transfer, and faster loading pages.

I haven't seen your site, so don't know how graphically intensive it is, but this could be one way to reduce your bill.

Passing this url along
http://www.hosthelp.com
Different articles on bandwidth,and hosting in general.

Let's see...

If I reduce all my graphics by 10%, that should knock me down from 63 GB to 6.3 GB which would be perfect.

WHOOPS! Reducing by 10% would bring me down to 56.7 GB, not 6.3. That would be 90%...Shows how good at math I am. Oh well, back to the drawinf board I guess.

Now, I know of some graphic reducers (I think Website Garage offers that, but in the past it was free, do they make you pay for it now?) but is there any real way to limit the size of the HTML on the actual pages themselves? I'm not aware of any but I'd be open to suggestions.

Thanks a lot, that's a great idea that'll get my mind turning.


[Edited by WestWingSW on 12-18-2000 at 12:32 PM]

Originally posted by WestWingSW
Now, I know of some graphic reducers (I think Website Garage offers that, but in the past it was free, do they make you pay for it now?) but is there any real way to limit the size of the HTML on the actual pages themselves?

GifOptimizer (http://www.gifoptimizer.com/) is still free.

You could cut your HTML size down a lot by getting rid of most of the Javascript (which rarely serves a purpose), but that wouldn't be as effective as cutting down (or even removing) graphics. (example: removing the 11k banner at the foot of the pages, or making it the same as the header, would save 9GB a month on your figures).

Rob

Well, the ad banners at the top and bottom of each page (The 11 KB banner I think you're refering to) are from an ad agency at not from me, would those KB figure into the total?

And, here's a thought that I'm sure someone else has thought of, but I wonder if it'll work.

Most of the GB that's being used are pictures from created wrestlers my visitors submit. If I host the graphics on a different server, wouldn't that seriously cut down on the bandwith I need?

I'm sure there's a flaw that makes that plan not possible, but I don't know of it and if I can host the graphics somewhere else, that would cut down a ton on the bandwith.

Possible...Impossible?

Thanks!

-Scott

No, it was the Wm2K slogan on foot of the WM2K pages I was referring to (maybe it's the other site you're optimizing, I don't think you've said anywhere which one or even if it is either of the sites in the sig).

Of course you could host graphics elsewhere (indeed you already seem to host bits of those pages all over the place, not just the ads which don't count). But if you find a great place to put the graphics that doesn't count the bandwidth, why not put the whole site there??

Your site totally wears me out from all the pop-up, pop-under and pop-sideways windows. :-(

Rob