If you want your new business to flourish or want to create new avenues for your existing business, a website is a must. Well, usefulness of websites is not limited to small business owners only, as even independent bloggers can start something on their own through a website.
To properly run a website, the two most important things required are: web hosting and a domain. While the latter acts as your address, the former is actually the place where your home (in this case, website) is built. Whenever you visit any web hosting provider’s official website, you will see the term bandwidth mentioned quite a few times. If you are a networking student, you must be having a bit of idea on what bandwidth is, but, if not, this article will help you to understand things in a better way, in the context of web hosting.
What is bandwidth?
There are millions and millions of computers that connect to the Internet from all over the world. Your Internet Service Provider has a very high speed connection to access the Internet. Now, it rents chunks of that high speed connection to you and thereby makes money. How much you can upload or download a file depends on the allotted bandwidth. Therefore bandwidth refers to the amount of data that you, as a visitor can download from a website. If your website pages are full of images, features and videos, it will require more bandwidth.
Bandwidth & Web Hosting Companies
When you buy a hosting package, you will be limited by a specific bandwidth figure. So, if your website traffic exceeds the available bandwidth, the visitors won’t be able to access your website anymore. To keep your website functional, you will need to buy more bandwidth.
Unlimited Bandwidth – Is it for Real?
You will see many hosting services flashing in their advertisements that they offer unlimited bandwidth. So, is it for real? Is there any website that can offer unlimited bandwidth?
To be honest, there is nothing like unlimited bandwidth. There must be some upper limit, but most of the times, even a highly visited website does not surpass that and hence, the webmasters never become aware of the fact that their website actually has a bandwidth limit.
Should Bandwidth be a Factor While Deciding on a Host?
It should not be, as most of the reputed hosting providers, these days, offers unlimited bandwidth plans. So, instead of bandwidth, you should weigh in more on other factors such as uptime guarantee, customer support, price, disk space and compatibility while deciding on the host you want to use.
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