What is Bandwithdth?

Bandwith is a term that is usually used to reference the data transfer from a website. The simplist was to explain bandwith is to think of your website as a cell phone.

As long as you never use the cell phone, you do not have any charges. But as soon as someone calls you, the clock starts ticking and you pay for each minute.

A website works the same way. You pay for the space on a web server. Generally you get a limited amount of bandwith or datatransfer for the month, lets say 200 cell phone minutes.

In the case of a cell phone, only one call can come in at one time. So you know that you talked for 200 minutes. However, in the case of a website, 200 people or more can access the site at the same time. If each uses one minute worth of your bandwith then you have used up your allocated amount for the month.

Depending on your hosting company or plan, your site could be shut down for the rest of the month, or you could be billed a premium for extra minutes.

The problem with that is that the extra billing can sometimes be several thousand dollars a month. If your inital plan is only $20 a month it wont cover much bandwith. Companies that bill for bandwith make most of their money by selling those extar minutes.

It is much like companies giving away free cell phones. They know you will use it and they charge you for every minute you talk.

It's not a scam if that's what your thinking. It does cost the company for that bandwith and they are just charging you for what you used. But you really have no way of knowing if the amount is correct. Your hosting company could present you with a bill for $1,000.00 for the month, and that is quite painful if you planned on paying $20.

Most websites will not use much bandwith as long as the website is small. Even if you have low traffic, if the site has a shopping cart with 1000 items, the search crawlers will access all 1000 pages frequently. Even with no human traffic a website can cost you $100 or more a month just to feed the search engine robots.

Now you see that bandwith becomes a commodity. Something you need to operate like gas in a car. But if you drive too far, it can break your budget.

Many real websites like walmart.com, amazon.com, google.com and such, can easily spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for bandwith on a single website. That is the primary reason you will see multiple hosting plans offered by website companies. Just like the cell phone companies offering 200 minutesor 1000 minutes.

The benefit in buying more bandwith is that you pay less per minute by commiting to 1000 minutes rather than 200.

So think of your website like a cell phone. And be prepared for incoming calls. If you are using your phone for business you do not want to be shut down.

Thare are other options for bandwith purchase. You can purchase dedicated bandwith. Sort of like unlimited cell phones minutes.

You can buy a T-1 which is 1.5 Megabytes Per Second. This will allow you to stay on the phone for as logn as you want, as long as you are only takling to one person at a time. If 200 people were calling you at the same time, they would get a busy signal.

A T-1 will usually cost between $300 and $600 per month and in most cases will allow much grater access at a much lower price than paying for individual minutes.

It all depends on what the website will require. How many calls a month will you get?

But if you plan on having a website, you should be fully aware of how it works and make sure you have enough bandwith to stay open.