Bandwidth or Data Transfer – Which is Which?

It is not uncommon to find the terms bandwidth and transfer used interchangeably, especially when it comes to web hosting features. Technically speaking however, there is actually a significant difference between the two. Bandwidth describes the amount of data able to be transferred per unit of time while data transfer denotes the amount of traffic your site generates. The major parallel is that bandwidth is merely a rate of data transfer.

A high capacity of bandwidth will enable a site to load much faster as more data can be transferred per second. This doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a high capacity of transfer as the amount of data depends largely on traffic as well as the size of your web pages. The more visitors that come to your site, the more data which inevitably will be transferred, thus resulting in greater data transfer.

Bandwidth and the Internet

As it relates to the internet, bandwidth is typically expressed in either bits or bytes per second, which represents a vital measurement of an output device. For instance, people using a dial-up modem generally have a maximum bandwidth of around 56 Kbps. Naturally, a DSL or cable modem has the ability to transfer more data per second with an amount of bandwidth at anywhere from 200 to 1000 Kbps. A Tier-1 line utilized by a web hosting provider can transfer over the internet at a rate of 1.5 Mbps and much higher.

Website Requirements

The amount of bandwidth and transfer your site requires mainly depends on how many visitors you anticipate. Data transfer is expressed in various measurements including bytes, kilobytes, megabytes or gigabytes. 30 gigabytes of data transfer or bandwidth per month equals an estimated 30,000 unique visitors each day. The typical website uses less than 250 megabytes of bandwidth with around 50 visitors per day. In most cases, only large, high traffic sites ever exceed the 30 gigabyte mark.

Bandwidth, Data Transfer and Web Hosting

Bandwidth is so critical that many web hosts leverage it as the major selling point of their hosting packages. Some make the claim of offering unlimited bandwidth or unmetered data transfer. However, the truth is, a higher capacity of bandwidth is very costly in the terms of money and server resources. If any provider truly offered an unlimited amount, they surely would not be in business for long.

Bandwidth and data transfer is something you need to look at very carefully when signing up with a host as some will suspend your account for exceeding resources. If your site happens to experience a certain burst in traffic and consumes more bandwidth, it will probably have an impact on the other users hosting on the server, something that could cost the provider money. The bigger question is what is considered as excessive usage? Is it 5, 10 or 20 GB of bandwidth? If bandwidth is unlimited and transfer unmetered, how could you possibly go over? Since the hosting industry is a business which must ensure profitability, it is safe to assume that unlimited bandwidth and transfer is simply an advertising gimmick.

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