Why you must understand about bandwidth and data transfer

To be able to make the right decisions and to operate successfully, every online entrepreneur needs to clearly understand the two key terms of bandwidth and data transfer. Some people even think that the two terms are very different and mean different things. This is not true. In actual fact bandwidth and data transfer mean the same thing and refer to the amount of data that can be sent between your web site and the person or persons visiting.

So how is bandwidth calculated? It is calculated by taking the size of your web site and the number of visitors loading your site onto their browsers. The size of your website will include images on the page and all scripting. The visitor who loads your page, in terms of bandwidth will be receiving the total size of the file or page they have loaded. So if a single 10KB file is viewed 200,000 times then the data transfer can be 2 GB (2,000,000 KB). You simply multiply the file size by the page loads or views of the same. Therefore the information required to calculate bandwidth is the size of your pages, the number of visitors and kinds of files you are offering to your visitors.

Bandwidth is a critical issue to understand well because quite often an ecommerce entrepreneur chooses to use a small web host with limited facility and ends up with a huge bill or a disabled site when traffic suddenly swells to eating up huge chunks of bandwidth that was not previously envisaged. This is happening more and more frequently these days.

Clearly understanding the calculation for bandwidth will be able to give you a very good idea of how many visitors will bring you close to your bandwidth limits. You will then be able to predict the eventuality in advance and be able to make arrangements well in advance to accommodate the extra bandwidth requirements at your site that will be brought about by the swelling numbers of visitors.

Before you enter into any hosting arrangement, it is also a good idea to fully understand the bandwidth limits under the contract with your web host. And even more important, what their terms and policies are for situations where you exceed your allotted bandwidth.

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