Unlimited Bandwidth in Web Hosting

ashish

New member
hey,

recently i have seen that a lot of people request for unlimited bandwidth in various forums, however i think there are a few things that they should know about...

Bandwidth explained
Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that you are allowed to have for a hosting package i.e. lets say you have a web page that is 48KB in size, now each time a user opens your site and goes to that page S/he downloads 48 KB of information on to his computer. If a 100 users view that page 100 times then there has been a total of 4800 KB of data transferred from the server on which your files are stored for the computer of users.

Size of web Page: 48 KB
Number of users who viewed the web page: 100
Total amount of data transferred: 48KB * 100 = 4800 KB

Bandwidth is the term that is used to denote the amount of data that has been transferred from your web space.

The amount of bandwidth that you require while choosing a host depends on two factors:

? The size of your site.
? The popularity of your site.

If your site is not very huge and you do not have any audio/video downloads and it?s not very popular i.e. not a lot of people visit your site then you do not really require a lot of bandwidth, on a average a web site uses up only 500 MB of bandwidth per month. Or if your site is small but extremely popular then you might have to go for a web hosting package that offers high bandwidth.

On the other hand if your web site is huge and you are providing audio/video downloads and your site is very popular then you would certainly require a huge amount of bandwidth. Let?s say you have a video file that is 150 MB in size and in a single day a 100 visitors download that file that means that 15 GB of bandwidth will be used. If you multiply that with 30 days for the month it comes to 450 GB.


The unlimited bandwidth controversy
For some time now a lot of hosting companies are supposedly providing "unlimited bandwidth" for their web hosting packages.

And it?s absolutely true, you can have unlimited bandwidth, but you will need unlimited amount of money by your side. Jokes apart, if you ever run into such a host, it would be best to turn and run back the way you came from.

Just think that if you can get unlimited bandwidth for $25-30 a month then why aren?t big companies like sun, Microsoft etc. not hosted there, in fact why isn't everyone hosted there or for that matter if unlimited is a standard feature then why don?t all the hosts offer that.

Is it because it is expensive and requires better hardware? No it?s because some hosts are honest. And don?t give in to such gimmicks.

Statistically speaking, a T1 internet connection equals approximately 500GB per month and costs around $1200 per month. So how can it be possible to get the same or unlimited for $30 a month?

There are a lot of ways you can be duped by unlimited hosts; here are just a few of them:

The secret of unlimited is actually buried in the Terms of Service of the host, do not be surprised to find that unlimited = 15 GB.

The host may restrict the sort of files that you can host on their server, generally image galleries and audio/video files attract a lot of more downloads thereby resulting in higher bandwidth consumption. So if there are no files of this type your site won?t really require a lot of bandwidth.

Some newly opened hosts use it for a scam, they take your money and after a few months when their server starts to become slow or reaches its limit, they run? with your money.

Some hosts outline in their Terms of Service that you can have unlimited bandwidth, as long as you qualify for it i.e. your site must use less then, lets say 2 GB of bandwidth in order to qualify for the unlimited bandwidth feature, as soon as your site goes over that limit they either start charging you for it or cut off your downloads.


You always get what you pay for, it?s a universal truth and it?s no different for web hosting.

If a host is using a cheap advertising gimmick like unlimited bandwidth they maybe lying about a few other things too, their dedicated support team could be a single person (the hoster itself in most cases) sitting in front of a computer and taking your calls.

Do you really want unlimited bandwidth hosting from hosts that have very limited resources at their disposal? Or do you want to go for a host that has spent thousands of dollars on setting up a good network infrastructure, servers and a highly qualified and dedicated support team? The choice ultimately is yours and yours alone.
 
Wow I could not agree with you more. I feel that these unlimited offers of disk space and bandwidth is hurting the hosting industry more then helping it. It is a way for a company to profit off of the gullable and un-informed people out htere.
 
This has been discussed several times and while I agree with both of you, I don't think it's going anywhere.

However, we can continue the struggle to inform the un-informed as much as possible with threads like this.. ;)
 
AlexF said:
This has been discussed several times and while I agree with both of you, I don't think it's going anywhere.

However, we can continue the struggle to inform the un-informed as much as possible with threads like this.. ;)
Unlimited bandwidth. Would you like a coke with that? :p
 
haha,

thanks for all the encouragements guys... this article is aimed at the newbies so they can make a informed decesion when choosing a web host :)

have a good one all :)
 
Well here is one example of something comes close to unlimited I found this on servermatrix.com forums under presales questions. I have always heard the term unmetered and thought unlimited but was corrected once by a freind of mine, though it seems there company phrases it differently.

I posted a question asking is the unmetered tryuely unmetered and they said yes and I found another post along the same topic where a admin for servermatrix stated that if you had a 20mbps unmetered connection from them you can cosntantly stream up to 217 gigs of data a day over 30 days and never get charged. Though 217 gigs is not unlimited I find that hard to beat by not offering and objectional content for download.

To me soemthing sounds fishy and I still do not believe in the marketing or search of unlimited anything regarding hosting.
 
Exactly. There's always a cap of some sort: bandwidth, processes, CPU, etc.

They should call it unlimited and unmetered with provisions or caps, but I guess they coudn't market it effectively then ;)
 
AlexF said:
Exactly. There's always a cap of some sort: bandwidth, processes, CPU, etc.

They should call it unlimited and unmetered with provisions or caps, but I guess they coudn't market it effectively then ;)
I agree! I tend to leave hosting sites that say unlimited space. There is no possible way you can offer unlimited space unless you own IBM and eat hard drives for dinner! ;)
 
Unoriginal said:
I can still have my unlimited hard drive, right? right?
LOL! If someone owns an unlimited hard drive I will buy ten right now! Wait there is no such thing! Now I am confused by all these unlimited hosting providers do they just continue to add hard drives via hot swappable bays? Wait that does not make sense!:confused:
 
Well, to me, Unlimited and Unmetered are two different things. Though they seem to be interchanged a bit.

The way I see it is.. by describing the exact detail of what you get.. Unlimited Monthly Transfer, because Bandwidth is also a term that is used to describe both, the speed of a connection, and the amount of data transferred.

As for the T1 post... some T1 providers, such as the one we have locally, provide unlimited transfer per month.. there is no cap.. except the bandwidth speed (which is obvious). So if we used 100GB one month, and 5000GB another, it wouldn't make the charge for the line any different.

The cost was actually not $1200 as stated, as well, because I believe that it varies from location to location. Here it's $450 for a max speed T1 (1.5Mbps).

My thought is, people don't provide it, because it's a great reason to push the customer into purchasing the "bigger-better" plan that comes with more Transfer.

The only reason a host shouldn't provide it, is if they have a transfer cap themselves. (ie. Dedicated Server, or the Net connection has a cap) Then it makes sense to charge for bandwidth, because in all technicality, you yourself are paying for it. :)

That's just my 2 cents on the subject.

NS
 
TheReason said:
LOL! If someone owns an unlimited hard drive I will buy ten right now!

Why would you buy 10, shouldn't one be enough? :D I guess it would be unlimitted to the tenth power?? :rolleyes: :eek:
 
I was being sarcastic as if there was an "unlimited HD" they would only need one, no use for the other 9. ;)
 
TheReason said:
LOL! If someone owns an unlimited hard drive I will buy ten right now!

I'll sell you an unlimited hard drive, however I must warn you that it has an unlimited seek time.
 
Hosts that offer unlimited everything tend to be around for a limited amount of time :eek:

Cheap hosts damage this industry to a very very deep level - cheapening services, stealing business from 'real' hosts then going bust or going back to school for the next term - does anyone have any ways of fighting back against this sort of bad practice??

Rob
 
Matrixx said:
Hosts that offer unlimited everything tend to be around for a limited amount of time :eek:
That is one of the best and most accurate statements I've seen in a long while.
Matrixx said:
Cheap hosts damage this industry to a very very deep level - cheapening services, stealing business from 'real' hosts then going bust or going back to school for the next term - does anyone have any ways of fighting back against this sort of bad practice??

Rob
Yes, hosts with shoddy ethics and the prices to go with them hurt not only the industry itself but the people they dupe into hosting with them. I am a small provider, but I prefer to only work within my means. When demand increases, so does my spending of both time AND money on the business. It is something called scaleability that these types of hosts have no idea about and no intention of offering because it keeps them from taking the profits and running instead of using them to grow the business.

It is a hard thing for some people to realize that you might have to take risks and put almost every cent back into the company for a while but the payoffs could be much better if you try to look toward (and adapt to achieve) a set of longterm success goals.
 
All of your are confusing transfer and bandwidth. ransfer is the total amount of data that you are allowed to pass through the server/account for a specified period of time (usually periods of one month) (inbound & outbound aka upload & download). Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that can be passed through the line at any given time (usually one second). Examples: 10 MB/sec, 100 MB/sec.

On another note:
Unlimited: Infinite amount (doesn't really exist)
Unmetered: Not monitored
 
yes, you are *technically* correct but that doesn't change the fact that the terms are used interchangeably throughout the industry. We get it.

Matters not getting into semantics over that or unlimited vs. unmetered, as we're just saying they almost always indicate "short lifespan host" to most of us.

:)
 
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