| Web Hosting Bandwidth Should Not Be Overlooked |
|
|
|
| Written by WillowS.Sparks | |
| Tuesday, 28 July 2009 | |
|
Web site hosting can be really confusing. You practically need a dictionary to figure out what some of the terms used mean. And there are many hosts, plans and features to go with each plan. So what's the best web hosting plan to choose?
Website hosting can be really confusing. You practically need a dictionary to figure out what some of the terms used mean. And there are many hosts, plans and features to go with each plan. So what's the best web hosting plan to choose? One of the most confusing web site hosting terms is probably bandwidth. It can mean a few different things. It can mean the size of the connection to your web server and it can mean how much data transfer is allowed. It can also mean how much room a band uses when they perform on stage. Ok, I was just kidding about the last one but lead guitarists do need a lot of room to run around, it seems. When it comes to web hosting, bandwidth mainly refers to data transfer. The connection to your server is important as well. If you think of an Internet connection as pipes and plumbing, you want a big pipe connected to your server so that a lot can flow through it quickly or if there isn't much traffic, it can still move through easily. Your website hosting plan needs to be able to handle traffic spikes when they come. Your data transfer (bandwidth) is how much data goes through the pipe. It's kind of like a water meter on your house that the water company comes out to check. How much data goes through depends on the traffic your site gets and what kind of data you are sending through. If your web site is just text and jpeg images, then that's not very big chunks of data. If you have audio and video files or large PDF files on your website, then those are larger files and when a website visitor requests them, that's more data being transferred from the web server to their computer. The two kinds of bandwidth that come with web hosting packages are allowed bandwidth and unlimited bandwidth. If you go with an allowed bandwidth plan, you will get charged if you go over that allowed amount of data transfer. Unlimited bandwidth plans will not charge you for use of bandwidth. Web hosts that have plans where youre only allowed a certain amount of bandwidth are typically website hosts that offer more in terms of management and uptime. Theyre usually a lot more reliable. They should give you some sort of control panel where you can monitor how much bandwidth your websites are using. Some will even let you pay in advance bandwidth at a cheaper price than if you end up going over / have an overage on bandwidth. The website hosts that provide plans with unlimited bandwidth are cheaper but their reliability can typically be lower than more expensive web hosting plans. These hosts typically want a lot of customers in order to turn a profit since they pay for the bandwidth costs themselves. Offering unlimited bandwidth is an incentive to get more customers. These website hosting packages are great for sites that are not mission critical websites and they are nicely priced at about $10 a month or less. The bottom line with web hosting is, you get what you pay for. If your website is important for the daily operations of your company, then you will want to go for a website hosting package thats not the cheapest. More expensive web hosting plans may or may not offer unlimited bandwidth in their plans. Its an important thing to look at when choosing plans. If bandwidth is not unlimited, then be sure to find out how much bandwidth overages will cost you. Hopefully with the knowledge in this article, you can now better find the right web hosting package that offers the right kind of bandwidth and also the right kind of rock band on stage! About the Author: Willow Sparks is a manger at a web site hosting company and has a site dedicated to information about website hosting. He posts great articles about unlimited bandwidth hosting. Also find out information about getting more website traffic by keeping your website up to date with website maintenance services. From the Webmaster: "Having the opportunity to share my hobbies and interests with so many people around the world gives me great satisfaction. As a bonus, I blog and produce websites about topics that interest me and receive ad revenue from the websites and Blogs."
|