Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Windows Hosting : Help needed in calculating bandwidth

[js1699]

Hi,

I'm a total newbie and am trying to calulate how much bandwidth (per month) I need. This will help in deciding what host to go with.

Have I calculated correctly...

avg page size(MB) - 0.10
no of pages - 10
videos + other audio (MB) for download - 1000
= download per person (MB) - 1000.976563

MAX probable number of visitors permonth - 1000
bandwidth required per month (MB) = 1000976.563
in GB = 977.5161743

I think I need to go with an unmetred bandwidth host

help much appreciated
thx
jagjit

[js1699]

anybody? please

[bobitza]

You're saying that all of the 1000 visitors will download videos, etc that will count for 1000 MB ??

[ServWise]

Originally Posted by js1699

Hi,

I'm a total newbie and am trying to calulate how much bandwidth (per month) I need. This will help in deciding what host to go with.

Have I calculated correctly...

avg page size(MB) - 0.10
no of pages - 10
videos + other audio (MB) for download - 1000
= download per person (MB) - 1000.976563

MAX probable number of visitors permonth - 1000
bandwidth required per month (MB) = 1000976.563
in GB = 977.5161743

I think I need to go with an unmetred bandwidth host

help much appreciated
thx
jagjit

Firstly I doubt any unmetered bandwidth host will let you have 1000GB a month no matter how unmetered they are. Unmetered / unlimited plans are just a sales technique, all servers have a network card limit and a CPU limit and a HDD drive limit and any site that taxes that to the detriment of the other users of the server will be asked to leave or move.

Read this http://www.findmyhosting.com/truthunlimited.htm

Secondly I doubt that every visitor to your website is going to download every audio/video file on your site (correct me if I'm wrong) at a wild guess it might be 20MB per visitor x 1000 visitors equals 20GB per month (Not including page sizes which are not really important) which is easily covered by most smallish reseller plans or largish shared hosting plans.

[DMEHosting]

You can expect to pay over $100 a month for that kind of BW. And most "unmetered" web hosts will start giving you warnings and charges after 200GB of bw i'm sure.

[canvas]

js1699,

It takes a lot of traffic to reach 1TB of monthly bandwidth. For such usage, it would probably be more cost effective to look at a dedicated server, or even a colocation setup, simply due to the sheer amount of bandwidth you'd be using.

Let's say you did in fact have 1TB of usage per month. On the 95th percentile basis, you could expect to be billed for probably 1.25 to 1.5 TB (closing in on 5Mbps) due to the way traffic spikes are averaged on the 95th percentile scale. Pricing for that can add up fast, especially if you're with a host/colo facility that offers guaranteed, high-quality bandwidth.

I agree with ServWise though, you'd be hard-pressed to require that much bandwidth. Even if your content is largely multimedia-based, without an active user audience there is little means to guestimate actual usage. I'd start with a much smaller figure, maybe upwards of 50GB/month, but not more unless you had a guaranteed 1000 users or so who were actively on your site on a daily basis.

[viratshah]

I don't think you need over 500gigs bandwidth!

[chenetwork]

Start off by going with a host that has a good reputation and provides an upgrade path so if you do actually get to 1TB of data transfer per month, you don't necessarily have to switch providers. If this is a brand new site, it will probably take some time before you are doing that kind of traffic anyway, so no reason to pay for what you don't need now.

Also, you could always offload some of your video content to YouTube and embed the videos on your Web site. This would cut down your bandwidth requirements significantly.

[DMEHosting]

To be safe, try getting a dedicated server.