Hey all...

I was wondering, do you use some kind of ratio for bandwidth to users?

For example, a dial-up provider might have 10 users to every 1 modem, because they will all not be using it at the same time.

Is there a comparable best-practice ratio for selling bandwidth as a hosting provider?? What would be consider "over-sold" knowing that "all" your users won't be using "all" of their bandwidth "all" the time?

Thanks for any insights!

Bill

good question....

This depends a lot on who you target as a customer.

For instance, if you go for the bandwidth hungry customers, you'll chew through a ton of bandwidth and get very little money out of it.

On the other hand, if you go for someone looking to setup an e-commerce oriented site (an online store, etc.), you will use much less bandwidth and have considerably higher revenues.

Our customers are primarily running e-commerce sites. On average, they use between 2Kbits/sec and 5Kbits/sec each during our peak hours.

Of course, some are using none and about 5% of the sites account for 90% of the bandwidth usage. This is pretty normal.

But, we're not using Cogent bandwidth, nor are we trying to attract any customers that are looking for dirt cheap bandwidth.

A good place to start if you've got a single server is 1.5Mbits/sec. Then load up the server and watch your bandwidth usage.

If you suddenly get a bunch of usage, its most likely a download mirror, porn site, or warez site. With a good TOS and well designed plans, you'll be able to get your usage back under control easily.

Over time, you'll develop your own averages that you can use for planning.