“Bandwidth” is a title that you may have heard many web hosts, including your own, discussing from time to time. A simple definition of this term is that is how much data is passed over an internet connection from one set to another. Bandwidth is one of the most important services that a web host can provide and is usually measured in how bits are sent each second. The amount of data being used on a website varies depending on what the the website is being used for. Sites where there is a lot of interaction and communication will take up a bigger bandwidth and this means sites like forums or blogs take up more bandwidth than a more common website. These sites offer far more interaction with the opportunity to load up content and add debate or opinions which is why they take up more bandwidth. These websites will have a greater amount of traffic in comparison to standard websites provided by firms which is another reason why in comparison, the amount of bandwidth that is used by communication or network sites will be much higher.

Knowing how to calculate bandwidth is important and easy. Take the size of your website to be 10 KB and that twenty people visit your site each day. This would mean your bandwidth usage could be calculated 10 x 20 bites for a day. Multiplying this figure by the amount of days in a month would give you your monthly bandwidth usage. It can be handy to know the other measurements as sometimes bandwidth is listed in bytes.

8 bits = 1 byte and 1024 bytes = 1 Kilobytes

It is easy to use bandwidth unnecessarily and the biggest culprits are large sized graphics and a lot of customer comments. It is also fair to say that if the end user seeks to receive a lot of images or large amounts of data that they too will use a fair share of bandwidth. This has to be borne in mind when you are constructing your website. It is common to want to add a lot of cool audio and visual treats to your site but doing so will greatly increase your bandwidth consumption. Knowing how much bandwidth you expect to use will help you seek the right package for your usage but beware of web host providers not living up to their promise. There are some providers who will not deliver what they guarantee and this makes choosing the correct supplier an important task.

Understand the amount of bandwidth that fits your requirements.

When you are considering the amount of bandwidth that your site will require, there are many things to consider. There are many influences on the answer that is best for you and particular attention must be attributed to mathematic and technical issues. The available bandwidth will limit the amount of items you can offer on your website so for current and future projects, consideration has to be made. Given that it is likely you will want to update your website over time, it is advisable to leave some bandwidth in store to allow for progression. Allowing yourself the opportunity to contemplate how much bandwidth is needed for your site can allow you to make the best decision possible. A good way to get the best advice is to ask your web provider for advice about what would be the best product for you. The simplest way to determine the amount of bandwidth you need to use is on a monthly basis and this is why the majority of providers offer measurements in this manner. A way to measure bandwidth can be seen as:

Average Page Views x Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Size Fudge Factor x 30

While if you allow people ample downloading options from your website your bandwidth would be measured as:

Adding the sum of the amount of visitors per day times how may times a page is looked at times the size of the web page and adding it to the number of files that retrieved from your site by the average size of the file will give the first half of the equation. This figure can then be multiplied by the largest number of days possible and a fudged figure to get the answer.

Note: All these are measured based on average data.

Relation between bandwidth and traffic:

There is a strong correlation between bandwidth usage and the amount of traffic a website gets. The best judge of this is quite often the visitors to a website as they will have first hand experience of undertaking actions of the site. This can be seen if a visitor wishes to download a music track or a video from the site. This creates traffic between the visitors’ computer and the website. The bandwidth this takes up can be very low if the user has a rapid internet connection, which helps the file to download in a short space of time. The opposite can be said if the user has a very slow connection and this will result in a long download time and a large amount of bandwidth being used. This is very important if you are trying to keep note of how many bits are being transferred as this is what is classed as traffic.

How to cut down bandwidth usage?

It might happen suddenly that you receive a monthly bill for hosting that brings perspiration on your forehead. The hosting company justified the bill explaining that the monthly minimum bandwidth usage has been exceeded for your website and asks you to bring down the file size in your website. You are at a fix and simply do not know what would be your send stand.

Yours website has several files, each of these files have respective sizes of their own. Each of these files, when used by the visitors, consumes some of the website bandwidth. You have control on the bandwidth usage of your website and can increase or decrease these according to the requirements. Another easy way to cut down bandwidth expenses is to prevent the use of too many files, graphics, images and downloadable file son your website. These files themselves are heavy and when downloaded by multiple users, can consume lots of bandwidth thus increasing cost. Suppose there is a large image in the webpage that is downloaded each time a visitor views the website. Then also the same thing happens and unnecessary bandwidth expenditure takes place. If removing the web page images is not possible, then try to decrease its size and you can seen the dramatic change in the bill, next time, when the web hosting company hand it over to you. Cascading Style Sheets also help you to save bandwidth as they reduce HTML file sizes considerably.

Handy hints for your bandwidth:

* Keep an eye on your website and organize a running total of how many visitors are using your site and make a prediction of how many will come in the next few months. Being equipped with a rough guide for your monthly use can reduce any shocks that come in your next bill.

* There are options to buy un-metered bandwidth hosting. In such a plan you are charged higher than nay normal shared or dedicated hosting plan and in return the usage will be unlimited. The host won’t monitor the bandwidth rating which is reflected on the left hand side of the control panel.

* If you make changes in your website then always calculate the current web page size or else you will not be able to keep track of the bandwidth bills.

* If you can, keep the number of visitors comments to a minimum. You may wish to allow only pre-approved or carefully selected comments onto your site.

* Talk to your web hosting company regularly for upgrading your website. Upgrading doesn’t always mean that there will be an increase in the bandwidth consumption. But this can also decrease the consumption of bandwidth by elimination unnecessary files.

* Rather than hosting things like Java Script within your site, try having them hosted with an external agent.

* Always upload resized images as heavy images consume bandwidth.

Last remarks:

Your web host provider is a great source of ideas and information. This is why finding the best one to forge a partnership with can make a huge difference to your site. There are so many different issues that will affect your bandwidth that choosing the right provider can inform you of what is right for you. One issue that is becoming more of a threat is bandwidth theft. It is regularly used by other websites and it is the process of using another sites graphics and pictures by linking to them. This is illegal and should not be undertaken under any circumstances. Some web host providers may tell a new user that it is okay to do this but you should never commit bandwidth theft. You can benefit from having a level of knowledge before you start discussions with your web host so doing some research is a great start. Knowing a little bit about the subject will help you greatly but be sure to listen to the technical tips and tricks that a bandwidth provider may be able to tell you to reduce your bandwidth usage.