Royaume-Uni
France
Determining how much bandwidth is necessary for a particular hosting situation is a difficult task. We usually don't track our personal usage close enough to have a clear idea of our needs. And while the amount of bandwidth alloted for a given hosting plan may seem very generous, overage costs are mostly quite high with underestimated bandwidth needs. Here are some guidelines to help you estimate how much bandwidth you may need for any given hosting setup.
First, identify your hosting needs. Particularly, what servers are you planning on hosting, and the rough number of expected users? If hosting servers with potentially large bandwidth needs, what content do you plan to provide? How much bandwidth you require varies widely based upon these factors. For example, even personal sites can use a lot of bandwidth if they host podcasts, photos or other large files that can quickly become popular.
One logical method for calculating bandwidth necessary for hosting a website is multiplying: site visitors by page views by average page size by days per month by safety factor. This can help determine if any given hosting plan will meet your needs. It can also help assess whether the current provider is able to keep meeting visitor demand as popularity grows and, if not, to determine when action is necessary and what
steps you should take.
The safety factor in the above equation is crucial to take into account, and should generally fall between 1.5 and 2.0. Essentially, this number guarantees you bandwidth flexibility that may come in handy with sudden spikes in popularity. It may seem tempting to do away with this variable and cut costs, still an unavailable site can spell the difference between a successful venture and a failed one. What is more, extra fees for using too much bandwidth can easily reduce the savings you made by cutting the costs on bandwidth.
There are various ways to use bandwidth more efficiently when necessary. Much can be saved by offloading some hosting to specialized systems which, while not as flexible as typical web hosts, are particularly optimized for specific types of content or for other large files. Podcasts, music, photos and other forms of media can be hosted on third-party sites optimized for such needs, and can be linked to from your main site. Also, generic solutions such as Amazon's Simple Storage System (S3) enable efficient and inexpensive hosting of large volumes of data.
Nowaday many web hosts set up very high limits of bandwidth or even none at all. Still, it's important not to sacrifice quality solutions just because they offer less bandwidth than their competition. Bandwidth is one of many factors that make up a quality host, but it can easily become inflated by web hosts who offer high limits being certain that most users will come nowhere near them. Such solutions usually attract customers, but can easily backfire when servers turn out to be over-provisioned and bandwidth becomes scarce. By becoming aware of roughly how much bandwidth is necessary, and by knowing what options are available should you find yourself near your limit, you can effectively avoid this trap and choose the host that best meets your specific needs. Also if you are planning to host large amount of videos or images you might need to look into vps solutions or dedicated servers.
Related Articles
Cheap vps
Xen vs OpenVZ
Company Overview
VPS.net offers virtual private server cloud hosting which puts you in control of your hosting plan. Cloud hosting continuously adjusts the server requirements your sites uses basing on the traffic and content. Instead of paying for a statistic amount of space and bandwidth, you only pay for what you use.
Offerings
VPS.net allows its customers to create their own custom virtual private server, using nodes of server space at or less each. The more resources you buy, the more you save, so there is a discount for bulk services. For example, buying at least two nodes reduces the cost to /each or a month, and buying 6 nodes - the allegedly most popular option - to /month or per node.
Each node of server space contains: 256MB of RAM, 10GB storage, 250GB transfer and a certain CPU share. All the nodes can be then added together creating a virtual machine, where you choose the operating system you want to install. Operating system options include: Ubuntu, CentOS, Gentoo, Debian and Turnkey Linux. Temporary servers are available for per day to help with surges in traffic that you don't expect to stick, such as when you are running a special promotion.
Pros
Data centers are located throughout the United States and the United Kingdom
Buy only as much as you need, including temporary servers handling small traffic spikes not expected to last very long
Affordable pricing
Daily billing keeps you from paying more than you need to
You can choose the Linux distribution you want to install on your virtual system
It comes with CannyBill, which allows you to resell the VPS.net hosting services to your clients, providing another stream of income and/or paying for your own hosting use.
The client is in complete control of the virtual system and can create several different ones to run various websites if he or she has enough nodes in the account.
Cons
Not designed for those who make do with shared hosting
Not for beginners
Doesn't provide Windows based hosting
Summary
For people who want scalability and a monthly cost lower than , VPS.net hosting is the way to go. Shared hosting is not a bad idea after all for those who don't deal with big sites and scalability just yet. In both cases though, paying only for what you use is a great advantage, however it is not the cheapest vps provider
VPS.net offers virtual private server cloud hosting which puts you in control of your hosting plan. Cloud hosting continuously adjusts the server requirements your sites uses basing on the traffic and content. Instead of paying for a statistic amount of space and bandwidth, you only pay for what you use.
Offerings
VPS.net allows its customers to create their own custom virtual private server, using nodes of server space at or less each. The more resources you buy, the more you save, so there is a discount for bulk services. For example, buying at least two nodes reduces the cost to /each or a month, and buying 6 nodes - the allegedly most popular option - to /month or per node.
Each node of server space contains: 256MB of RAM, 10GB storage, 250GB transfer and a certain CPU share. All the nodes can be then added together creating a virtual machine, where you choose the operating system you want to install. Operating system options include: Ubuntu, CentOS, Gentoo, Debian and Turnkey Linux. Temporary servers are available for per day to help with surges in traffic that you don't expect to stick, such as when you are running a special promotion.
Pros
Data centers are located throughout the United States and the United Kingdom
Buy only as much as you need, including temporary servers handling small traffic spikes not expected to last very long
Affordable pricing
Daily billing keeps you from paying more than you need to
You can choose the Linux distribution you want to install on your virtual system
It comes with CannyBill, which allows you to resell the VPS.net hosting services to your clients, providing another stream of income and/or paying for your own hosting use.
The client is in complete control of the virtual system and can create several different ones to run various websites if he or she has enough nodes in the account.
Cons
Not designed for those who make do with shared hosting
Not for beginners
Doesn't provide Windows based hosting
Summary
For people who want scalability and a monthly cost lower than , VPS.net hosting is the way to go. Shared hosting is not a bad idea after all for those who don't deal with big sites and scalability just yet. In both cases though, paying only for what you use is a great advantage, however it is not the cheapest vps provider
Being rather yellow in web hosting, I chose BlueHost mostly for the prices. After some researches done I found that they have pretty good user reviews,. It is very appealing and transparent for such an inexperienced person as me. More than ten years in the industry is another reason I joined. Generally, I found both the webpage and the ratings convincing and decided they would be good enough (affordable, first of all) for a start. What mostly attracted me was:
1. All the necessary standard features of a web host: cPanel, multiple database support, FTP, and email, to name just some;
2. Unlimited diskspace, and unlimited bandwidth (as far as I know pretty unusual to come in package), followed by unlimited numbers of addon domains, parked domains, and subdomains. (the limitations concern the number of databases - 50 each for MySQL and Postgre - and FTP and email accounts -1,000 and 2500, respectively);
3. A fair price for a 24 months contract: .95/month (no setup fee, free domain included);
4. As for their customer support, they never triggered my bad temper. When calling I was never put on hold for very long, and all my questions were successfully answered by the incredibly patient staff;
5. One of the main reasons I chose them is that the wordpress plugin I had was and still is working only with linux.
There are some cons, though:
First of all, the pricing of the short term (3 months) contract - for those interested $9.95/month may seem a little too much to pay.
And for me personally, the complaints of some users about the quality of service - which I luckily have had no chance to confirm yet - as it comes to suspending/deleting their accounts without having provided a sensible enough reason for it (what allows for it is probably the vague clause stating that “Any violation found or fraudulent activity that system personnel deem inappropriate may have your account immediately terminated without notice and any recorded evidence reported to authorized persons.”) I must admit I've felt quite anxious having read them. Still, where there are many users, complaints are a natural thing to appear.
All in all, I'd recommend BlueHost for creating personal websites to beginners like me, but if you're business-oriented, then I suggest gathering more detailed information about their features and service from their home page and other reliable sources before signing up. Click for more info
1. All the necessary standard features of a web host: cPanel, multiple database support, FTP, and email, to name just some;
2. Unlimited diskspace, and unlimited bandwidth (as far as I know pretty unusual to come in package), followed by unlimited numbers of addon domains, parked domains, and subdomains. (the limitations concern the number of databases - 50 each for MySQL and Postgre - and FTP and email accounts -1,000 and 2500, respectively);
3. A fair price for a 24 months contract: .95/month (no setup fee, free domain included);
4. As for their customer support, they never triggered my bad temper. When calling I was never put on hold for very long, and all my questions were successfully answered by the incredibly patient staff;
5. One of the main reasons I chose them is that the wordpress plugin I had was and still is working only with linux.
There are some cons, though:
First of all, the pricing of the short term (3 months) contract - for those interested $9.95/month may seem a little too much to pay.
And for me personally, the complaints of some users about the quality of service - which I luckily have had no chance to confirm yet - as it comes to suspending/deleting their accounts without having provided a sensible enough reason for it (what allows for it is probably the vague clause stating that “Any violation found or fraudulent activity that system personnel deem inappropriate may have your account immediately terminated without notice and any recorded evidence reported to authorized persons.”) I must admit I've felt quite anxious having read them. Still, where there are many users, complaints are a natural thing to appear.
All in all, I'd recommend BlueHost for creating personal websites to beginners like me, but if you're business-oriented, then I suggest gathering more detailed information about their features and service from their home page and other reliable sources before signing up. Click for more info