A friend of mine has narrowed down their hosting requirement to two web hosting companys:

One with bandwith 1.200.000 kB/s and one with 8.400.000 kB/s ( with same
trace appr. 35 ms ).

How important is this?

All depends on how large your friend's site is and how many visitors they expect to receive.

Thanks for the reply,

I'm not that technical, but how does the size of his site effect the choice?

I've spoke to him and he currently has around 2000 to 3000 page views per day. The site is approx 200 kB in size.

Does this make his decision any easier?

Without knowing how much traffic each gets daily it really isn't posible to make a good judgement. The one with more bandwidth may have 10,000 sites using it and the smaller may have 10. Better questions to ask each may be how many sites, is it burstable, redundancy, daily backups, 24/7 support...others?

Thanks for your help,

I've got him to go and ask the hosts some more relevent questions before making his final selection.

Why don't you tell us which hosts you're considering? There's more to life than bandwidth, and if you're about to sign up with a known problem host we can head you off.

Originally posted by Deb Suran
Why don't you tell us which hosts you're considering? There's more to life than bandwidth, and if you're about to sign up with a known problem host we can head you off.

That's very true. One of the hosts may be just a little faster, but what about their server? If you have a fast pipe and a slow or over loaded server then the bandwidth doesn't really matter. Also look at their support. Ask them some questions. Ask current customers of theirs. This is one of the best checks you can make.

Oh, and read Ded's site. If it's a problem host se will let you know. :uzi:

Just kidding Deb, I actually like people that tell it like it is.