Bandwidth on hosting is an important factor that you need to consider when buying a web hosting package. With sufficient bandwidth, your website’s performance will be more optimal.
Why is web hosting bandwidth an important factor?
Relax… This article will help you understand it completely, from understanding to bandwidth functions in web hosting.
More curious, right? Let’s see more!
What is Bandwidth in Hosting?
Web hosting bandwidth is the maximum amount of data from your website that can be transferred from the server to the visitors. The data in question are images, videos, links, and others.
The greater the bandwidth of your hosting, the easier it is for your website to be accessed by visitors. Because, bandwidth is the limit of data access from your website at a certain time.
Oh yeah, you might be wondering, “means this bandwidth is the same as data transfer, huh?”
Not. Bandwidth on hosting is a different matter with data transfer. So, web hosting bandwidth is data quota that can be transferred. Meanwhile, data transfer refers to the amount of data transferred from your website.
Bandwidth that suits your needs will produce a website with good performance.
It’s like a movie theater with 2 ticket booths that can only serve 2 potential buyers at the same time. If the number of buyers increases, the two counters will be overwhelmed, and more people will be forced to wait to be served.
Same thing with bandwidth. If your website’s bandwidth is 200MB, then when there are 10 people accessing your website at the same time, with 2MB of data access, the website can serve it.
Even so, when your bandwidth runs out, your website becomes inaccessible. So, make a large adjustment of bandwidth to your needs so that your website runs smoothly.
Well, you already know what web hosting bandwidth is, right? Now let’s discuss more about the bandwidth function of hosting.
Bandwidth Functions on Hosting
Here are some bandwidth functions on hosting that you need to know:
1. Set the Amount of Data Transfer
The function of bandwidth on the first hosting is as a regulator of the amount of data that can be transferred.
Without bandwidth restrictions, the server can be down when accessed by many people at the same time with a high amount of data transfer. Because, there is an overload because the server has to serve requests beyond its capacity.
Not surprisingly, the hosting service provider will adjust the bandwidth to ensure a stable server. That way, all service users get the best performance on their website.
2. Increase Website Loading Speed
Using the bandwidth that suits your needs will make the website easily accessible. This is one function of bandwidth on hosting that is no less important.
For example, if your bandwidth is 100MB and the data on the page the visitor is accessing is 20MB. So, your website can be accessed by 5 visitors at once and none of those visitors have to wait.
On the other hand, like the counter in the example above, the more people who try to access the website outside of the bandwidth requirements, the more visitors will have to wait.
The thing to remember is that visitors don’t want to wait too long for the website to load. So, choosing the right bandwidth can be a tip to increase website speed.
3. Split Data Transfer Speed
The function of bandwidth on the other hosting is as a divider of data transfer speed evenly to all server users.
This is so that users do not fight over each other for bandwidth. With a good distribution, each user of the hosting service will get bandwidth according to the needs of his website.
If this division is not carried out, the data transfer speed of other users will slow down or the performance will be unstable.
4. Serving More Dynamic Content
A website with a bandwidth that matches the type of website will make it easier for you to better manage content, such as images, videos, audio, or others.
The selection of the type of content that makes the website attractive can be done when you know the bandwidth you have. So, don’t worry about exceeding the specified capacity.
For example, if the bandwidth is limited, you will certainly find it difficult to manage a website with video (vlog) or audio (podcast) content. Because the data transfer required for the content is certainly large.
So, you have started to understand the bandwidth function in hosting, right? Now is the time to start learning how to measure your website’s bandwidth requirements.
How to Determine the Bandwidth Requirements of a Website?
Generally, how to calculate bandwidth on a website can be done in the following three ways:
1. Calculating Average Page Size
Page size is the file size on a web page. To find out the page size of your website, do a test using a speed test tool like Pingdom.
2. Counting Number of Visitors and Pageviews
The next step is to calculate the number of visitors each month and pageviews of your website with a website analytic tool.
Generally, Google Analytics is a tool that is quite capable for these needs. So, make sure you have connected Google Analytics to the website
To see the number of visitors or users and pageviews in a certain time, you can go to the main page of Google Analytics. Then, go to the Audience menu > Overview.
Don’t forget, you need to specify the duration of the check you want to know. Well, in the picture above, the number of visitors to the website is known to be 53,374 and pageviews of 400,676.
Next, to find out the average pageviews per visitor, you can divide the pageviews by the number of registered users.
3. Calculating Bandwidth Requirements
Well, with the two data above, you can calculate the bandwidth requirements for your website.
To do this, multiply all the data that you have obtained according to the following formula:
Hosting Bandwidth = Avg Page Size x Avg Monthly Visitor x Avg Page View pervisitor
As an example of a measurement you take records the following data:
Homepage = 4MB
Total page size of 25 articles on the website = 30MB
So, the average page size of your website is 34 MB divided by 26 pages, which is 1.3MB.
Well, if you assume that your website gets 5000 visitors per month and the average number of pageviews per visitor is 2. So, the bandwidth required is 13,000 MB per month.
Keep in mind, the method above only measures your bandwidth requirements in the specified time range. So, if there is a change in the form of a growth in the number of visitors, a larger bandwidth capacity is needed.
Already Understand the Importance of Bandwidth in Hosting?
Bandwidth on hosting is the capacity of data transfer from the web hosting server to visitors. This is important to understand when you want to build a website.
In this article, you have also learned about the various bandwidth functions of hosting. Starting from setting the amount of data transfer, dividing the speed of data transfer, to increasing page load speed.
Choosing the right hosting bandwidth affects website performance. We have explained how to determine the bandwidth requirements above.
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