How much bandwidth should I have?

Google ‘bandwidth’ and you will get a number of technical definitions but simply put, bandwidth is the transmission of data per unit time that a connection can handle. A network with large bandwidth can move data (like a game file) much quicker than a network with lower bandwidth. So, now that you know what bandwidth is, you must be wondering how to measure it.

First, units of bandwidth are typically bits per second.  Therefore, a connection with 200 Mbps or 200 Mega bit per second connection moves 200000000 bits every second.

Why is bandwidth important?

It’s easy to ignore bandwidth as a term that network administrators or geeks like to use. But, knowing more about this term will help you get the best out of your connection. You might be wondering what your connection speed is when it seems that your internet is suddenly slow someday. Maybe you are not receiving the bandwidth that your Internet service provider had billed you for.

Maybe you bought that fancy new Smart TV that promises On-demand video and you are wondering whether your current internet connection can handle it without bringing your whole network to a halt. For many people online gaming and high bitrate streaming video are the largest bandwidth consumers.

What does bandwidth mean for websites?

Web Hosting service providers calculate bandwidth for website slightly differently. Bandwidth signifies the level of traffic for the site. You check the transfer rate by calculating the amount of data transferred between your site users and the internet over a period (typically a month).

If your average page size is 20KB and you have 2 pages you need typical bandwidth of about 6.2GB per month. You should use a bandwidth calculator to figure out your requirements.

Here’s how you should calculate your required bandwidth:

1. Take stock of your website and check the average page size.
2. Estimate your monthly users and then multiply the page size with the average users
3. Estimate the average page view for a visitor and multiply that with the number that you got in step 2.

This is the starting value of your requirement; however, you need to include a ‘buffer’ in case your traffic increases or your site goes viral. This is called a redundancy factor and can range from 1.8 – 1.9. If your site has downloads, then the file size of the download must be accounted for and can be added into the average page size as it will also contribute to your website’s bandwidth. For example:

Daily visitors (average): Monthly visitors / 30
Page size (average):  total website size / number of pages
Page Views(average): Page viewed per visitor
File Size: total file size / number of files
Redundant factor:  anything from 1.5 – 1.9 as a buffer

Required Bandwidth = Daily visitors (average) X Page size (average), X Page Views (average), X File Size, X Downloads per day (average), X 30 (Number of days in a month) or X Redundant factor.

Having enough bandwidth for your website will ensure that your site is always available. So ensure that your hosting provider offers a variety of hosting packages to cater to your specific requirements. Check out these hosting packages built with enough bandwidth for small to large enterprises.

Search Engine optimisation

SEO means Search engine optimisation. It is a protocol for ensuring that your website achieves a high rank on organic search results. SEO has a complete set of rules that must be followed to ensure high rankings on search results. Websites must go through search engine optimisation as this will ensure high visibility and high performance in modern browsers.

SEO or Search engine optimisation also helps in optimising pages to be delivered over mobile networks where bandwidth and connection speed might be lower or variable. We recommend this Free and Pro SEO service for testing your website’s speed. There are multiple phases which the website must go through that will ensure success.

1. Website Technical Optimisation.
2. Content Optimisation.
3. Website Promotion.

1. Website Technical Optimisation

This involves getting all the settings right so that there is no issue with crawling and indexing your website. Typically, this is just a one-time process and will not be needed later. Technical optimisation is a critical part of the SEO process and will have an extremely large impact on rank.

2. Content Optimisation

Optimise your content so that search engines find out the context of your site. This enables the search engine to understand what your website is about. This is accomplished with an optimised website structure, SEO keywords, internal links, image alternate text and blogs to help search engines ‘read’ the site.

3. Website Promotion

When a user searches for something, search engines look up their index and check to see if something matches the intent of the user. One of the major methods of determining this is through backlinks.

Backlinks signify that a website is legitimate and depending on where the back links are, it helps to determine your SEO rank. IN fact, if the link is on a well-known and trusted site, rankings, then this can positively impact your site. Whereas, if you have paid back links, you could see more negative effects on your website’s ranking. Links acquired this way are a violation of Google’s guidelines and will result in a penalty.

Building backlinks organically is achieved through good and quality content. Good content will get others to refer to you and therefore get you good rankings and high traffic. Luxhosting.com provides an SEO service and you can also try the free version on our site.

Learn more about how to measure bandwidth here.