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Bandwidth &
Data Transfer
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The difference between bandwidth and data transfer
It is very common to find the two words - bandwidth and data
transfer, used synonymously on the internet, specially on web
host's pricing plans. However, technically speaking, there is
quite a difference between these two terms. Bandwidth denotes
the volume of data that can be transferred per unit of time.
Data transfer is the measure of the traffic generated from your
website. The difference is that the bandwidth is a rate of data
transfer.
If the bandwidth is high, the website will load faster
because it can transfer more data per second. This does not mean
that the data transfer will be high, because the amount of data
transferred will depend on the number of visitors to your
website and the file sizes of your website pages (including
image, audio and video files etc.). The greater the number of
visitors, the greater the amount of data transferred from your
website, and so larger will be the data transfer. |
Bandwidth and connection to internet
Bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or bytes
per second. It is a very important measure of an input output
(I/O) device. For example the modem that we use to connect to
the internet has a certain maximum bandwidth (say 56 Kbps). On
the other side a cable modem can transfer more data per second
and usually has a bandwidth of around 200 - 1000 Kbps. A T1 line
to the internet can transfer at the rate of 1.5 Mbps or higher.
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Data transfer requirements for websites
Data transfer is measured in bytes, kilo bytes (KB), mega bytes
(MB) or giga bytes (GB). If a website delivers 100,000 pages
each month with average page file size of 20 KB, the data
transfer per month will be 2 GB. Almost 80% of websites on the
internet uses less than 5 GB of data transfer per month.
30 Gigabytes of monthly bandwidth or data transfer translates
to about 30,000 unique visitors per day. The average website
uses less than 250MB of bandwidth per month and receives about
50 visitors per day, so only very popular sites ever exceed
30GB. |
Truths about unlimited data transfer
Some web hosts claim that they offer unlimited or unmetered data
transfer. Higher bandwidth cost money and tie up server
resources, so if any host truly offered unlimited data transfer
at any price they would not be in business for very long. If you
read their Terms of Service, you will find the following
language or something similar:
"If at any time the Customer’s
website generates enough bandwidth usage to affect the
performance of other customer sites on the server, we reserve
the full right to terminate the Customer’s domain name without
refund."
What this means is if the host feels that any customer's
website is costing them more money in bandwidth than the amount
that customer pays, they will close the account without refund.
Of course the resources of each server are set up not to exceed
a certain amount of traffic, so higher bandwidth usage by any
customer will automatically have an impact on other accounts on
that server. The big question is what kind of bandwidth do they
consider excessive, 1GB, 2GB, 3GB, 5GB, etc.? Is their bandwidth
really unlimited or unmetered? If they do not measure
bandwidth, how would they know when someone is using too much,
and how can they keep their servers from running out of
resources? |
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