The BannerView newsletter is a biweekly publication providing tips and advice for conducting E-Business (Business on the Internet). BannerView.com, a Cenicola-Helvin Enterprises brand, is a variety of e-business solutions ranging from Web site development to email marketing software, e-commerce systems, custom online database solutions to Web site hosting & maintenance. In each biweekly newsletter, you can depend on helpful tips and advice for conducting business online. As always, archived versions of previous newsletters can be found by visiting the newsletter archive.

DETERMINING HOW MUCH DATA TRANSFER (BANDWIDTH) YOUR WEB SITE NEEDS

Data Transfer, commonly referred to as "Bandwidth," is the amount of data that flows across a network in a given time period. Most Web hosting providers measure bandwidth monthly. They pay their service providers to provide bandwidth and then pass that cost on to the customers in the form of Web hosting plans.

With so many Web hosting companies offering a number of different hosting plans, it can be difficult to determine how much bandwidth your Web site will need. Usually measured in gigabytes of bandwidth, does your hosting plan provide enough gigabytes of bandwidth to handle your Web site? You first need to understand how much bandwidth a gigabyte will provide. If a Web page, including the text and graphics, is 50 kilobytes in size, your Web site could be viewed 20,000 times with a single gigabyte. For the average hobby Web site, that is more than enough. To make things more clear, if each visitor to your Web site viewed an average of 5 Web pages, one gigabyte would still provide enough bandwidth to serve 4,000 unique visitors to your Web site every month.

While serving simple Web pages doesn't require much bandwidth, the same can't be said about downloading files. If you plan on allowing people to download files such as music, pdf documents, flash, or videos, bandwidth can be used very quickly with only a small number of people visiting your Web site. If a file on your Web site was 2 Megabytes, you could only serve 500 downloads before using 1 gigabyte of bandwidth. This doesn't even count the Web pages viewed in order to get to the link to download the files.

Most Web hosting providers price their budget Web hosting plans based on the fact that most people will only use a fraction of the resources available to them. What most companies don't let you know up front is that if you did use the maximum bandwidth available to you each month, your Web site would most likely be shut down. They figure they can afford to lose a resource hogging customer that only pays $5 per month. If you know your Web site must be up regardless of how much bandwidth it's using, choosing a budget Web hosting plan is not the solution as these companies could oversubscribe their services by exponential amounts. If you know your Web site is going to need a significant number of resources, you should choose a flexible hosting plan with a company that oversubscribes their services by 3 to 1 or less. In addition to choosing the right hosting plan with the right company, make sure you are aware of the overage charges to keep your Web site operating should you go over the allotted bandwidth. The last thing you want is for your hosting company to pull your Web site because too many visitors are using your Web site and generating revenue for your business.

If you know what you plan to do with your Web site, you can have a pretty good idea of how much bandwidth you'll need included with your Web hosting plan. If you anticipate that you will be needing to serve a lot of video, music or other high bandwidth files, you may need to consider going with a higher initial plan. If your Web site is brand new and you have no idea of how much bandwidth you're going to need, go with the lowest plan as you can always grow into the next plan.

There are a number of BannerView.com Web Hosting plans suited to serve the needs of many Web sites. Get in touch with a dedicated account executive to help determine the right plan for your business with the knowledge that you'll have room to grow and won't be stuck with a company that is careless with its resources.

Call us within Las Vegas at (702) 312-9444 or outside of Las Vegas Toll Free at (888) 221-8640 to schedule a free consultation to learn which BannerView.com E-Business Solutions are available for your business. Or, fill out our online form on our Web site and a representative will contact you to schedule your free consultation.

BannerView.com E-Business Solutions are available Nationwide. See our Television commercial at BannerView.com.

Stay tuned to the BannerView newsletter, sent every other week on Wednesday, for helpful tips, thoughtful advice and answers to questions you may be asking about how to conduct business online.

Have a question about E-Business? Send us your questions and read the answers in upcoming newsletters!

Sincerely,

BannerView.com E-Business Solutions
A Cenicola-Helvin Enterprises Brand
http://www.BannerView.com

Your preferences are currently set to receiving HTML formatted emails. If you would like to receive Plain Text formatted emails, please click here. If you wish to cancel your subscription to the BannerView.com Newsletter, you may unsubscribe here by clicking on the unsubscribe button. You will then be removed from our list of newsletter subscribers.