When choosing a hosting solution for whatever web project in Southeast Asia, VPS Hosting Hong Kong will be a great – affordable yet versatile and reliable solution. However, your choice is not only limited to hosting being a VPS, shared hosting, or a dedicated server, as well as to the server’s physical location. In fact, there are a number of variables that you’ll encounter when selecting a particular hosting plan, such as disk space, processor cores, RAM, as well as bandwidth. While the first three parameters are rather obvious, since they define the performance of your home PC while the last parameter belongs particularly to the realm of internet networks and is therefore especially worth paying attention to – what we are going to do in the article below.
What is server traffic bandwidth?
Server traffic bandwidth refers to the network capacity determining how many bytes of data can be transferred to and from the server within a certain time frame – usually a month of server rental. Bandwidth determines the amount of content to be transferred to and from your server each month, and should thus be chosen based on the scale and type of your website, the heaviness of content on it, and the expected number of its visitors.
The specificity of bandwidth in web hosting
Unlike the rest of the parameters that grow interdependently with the capacity of the plans – plans with more, say, cores tend to have more storage space and memory and vice versa – bandwidth usually doesn’t follow this pattern. It often varies from location to location depending on the specificity of the data center the provider’s servers are housed in. It may remain the same in all cheaper plans and increase in some top-tier plans. You usually have less flexibility when choosing bandwidth, but if you don’t find plans that provide a suitable combination of bandwidth and other parameters within the provider’s standard plans, you can try to contact them and ask if you can get additional bandwidth on some special conditions. If a particular provider can’t offer it to you, you probably have to search for another one.
Volumes of bandwidth. Unlimited bandwidth
Bandwidth is offered in different volumes that depend not so much on the provider as on the data center and its network infrastructure. For this reason, identical plans in different locations by a given provider may feature different amounts of bandwidth.
When it comes to the volumes of bandwidth, it can be sometimes limited to a concrete number of bytes – 300 GB, 1 TB, and so on. Sometimes a provider may also offer unlimited or unmetered bandwidth. While it is mostly a sign of a large amount of bandwidth, it is not a guarantee that there is no actual limit to it. Unlimited bandwidth may have a symbolic limit that is present due to some technical reasons and can be hardly exceeded – say 10 PB. However, the limit can be much lower. Some unscrupulous hosts would offer such plans with an asterisk and with bandwidth amounts that are likely to be exceeded, and if this happens a user will have to pay an unfairly high fee. Therefore you should be careful whenever you see a plan with allegedly unlimited or unmetered bandwidth.
Bandwidth VS. network connection speed
Beside bandwidth, there is another parameter that refers to traffic and can be referred to as just “traffic” on some occasions, and this is a network connection speed. However, these are two distinct parameters that aren’t interdependent and you should know the distinction between them to not end up being confused or fooled.
Bot parameters refer to the amount of traffic that can be transferred within a unit of time. However, in the case of bandwidth it’s usually a large time span – like a month or so, while in the case of the network connection speed, it’s a matter of a second.
Server traffic bandwidth is measured in bytes with the appropriate prefix (giga-, peta- and so on), while network connection speed is measured in bits per second.
The two parameters don’t affect each other. If you have 300 GB of monthly bandwidth and 1 Gbps network connection, you can consume any amount of GB on any day (5 GB on one day and 15 on another), but not more than 300 a month. The speed rate of doing it however will remain the same during all that time.
While bandwidth can be unlimited, network connection speed always has a very concrete limit. Opting for an unlimited bandwidth plan you won’t thus have an unlimited network connection speed.
Conclusion
Bandwidth is one of the essential parameters that you’ll encounter when looking for a web hosting plan. It determines the amount of data that you can transfer to and from your server within a given time span (usually a month) and it’s essential to be considered depending on the size of your website and the objects it deals with. In the article, we’ve covered some basic information you should know about bandwidth before choosing a plan for your website. We wish you good luck with it and have a nice day.
