Hello everyone,

I am trying to ascertain for my company whether we should host our web servers inhouse or outhouse. I would like some advice regarding calculating bandwidth needed. Quite simply I am unsure.

If I was to pay $n per xMbit size internet connection what would the cost per Gb of data transferred ?

I am unsure as to whether to look at the data being transferred averaged out over the year on a nice easy 24/7 365 (which of course the data does not travel that way) or just look purely at peek loads etc.,

After all the above I am coming up with figures that look so extremely wrong that I then start to thnk that I have my bits and bytes mixed up. BY this I mean is it standard to measure size of internet connections in bits and data transferred in bytes, or is it all measured in bits?

Help and thanks in advance for your anticipated help.

Greetings:

If it helps...

128 Kbps translates to 40.5063 GB per month
256 Kbps translates to 81.0127 GB per month
512 Kbps translates to 162.0253 GB per month
768 Kbps translates to 243.0380 GB per month
1 Mbps translates to 316.4557 GB per month

128 Kilobits per second equates to 40.5063 GB per month? I am not being an ass, we have been working on clearing up the bandwidth issue for our customers and, I think, we end up freaking them out as often as not. This is what our techs came up with -

http://www.schmolie.com/accounts/pipeselector.shtml


:eek4:

Your tech came up with 38GB for a 128k pipe.

The GB <-> kbit/s is a general approximation. The following are industry-accepted values:

monthly avg <-> monthly transfer
64kbit/s <-> 20GB
128kbit/s <-> 40GB
256kbit/s <-> 80GB
(notice a trend yet?)
512kbit/s <-> 160GB
1,024kbit/s or 1Mbit/s <-> 320GB

If you want the exact values, whip out your calculator:

64kbit/s * 60s/m * 60m/h * 24h/d * 30.5d/mo = 168,652,800 kbit/month

168,652,800kbit/month / 8bits/byte = 21,081,600kbytes/month

21,081,600,000 bytes / 1,024bytes/kbyte / 1,024kbytes/mbyte / 1,024mbytes/gbyte = 19.6337GB/month

This is assuming 30.5 days in a month. If you want to be precise, calculate the number of seconds in the month in question and rework the problem with that. That's going to be the most precise approximation you can get (precise approximation -- silly huh...).

You'll get different "exact" numbers from different places because of different days-per-month values and the current position of the moon (that affects everything you know). However, everyone will come out with an approximation of 64kbit/s <-> 20GB. To make life easier on me, I just use this formula:

64kbit/s / 3.2 = 20GB. I divide kbit/s by 3.2 and get my GB. I multiply my GB by 3.2 and get my kbit/s. It's not exact, but it's close enough for my application.

"Close enough" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I make it count towards monthly bandwidth calculations, too.

If I made any errors anywhere, please correct me. I blame the calculator on false information above, my fault or not. :D

1MPS = 324GB (Month)

I always use that calculation for some odd reason.

Nice explanation Alexander, you should be teaching!