Understanding The Difference Between Bandwidth and Data Transfer
Contributed By Boris Mordkovich, Director of Operations at MordComm, Inc.

Simply put, bandwidth refers to how much data can be transferred at a time. Data transfer relates to how much data is actually being transferred. Think of it this way: If bandwidth were a bridge, then the bigger the bridge, the more vehicles can pass over it. Data transfer, on the other hand, can be compared to the number of vehicles allowed on the bridge in a given period of time. In essence, data transfer is the consumption of bandwidth.

How Your Site Is Affected
The less bandwidth you have, the slower your site will take to load, regardless of your visitor’s connection capabilities. If you have more visitors, some of them will have to wait their turn to see your site. Whereas, the less data transfer you have, the more often you’ll find your site is unavailable because you will reach the maximum allowance more often.

Computing Your Requirements
You need to figure out what is sufficient for your site to function. Most of this information is available from your traffic history. If you don’t have an existing site, provide an optimistic estimate if you intend to heavily promote the site. Then get ready for some math.
Find out the daily averages of:
· Number of visitors/anticipated number of visitors
· Page size, including graphics
· Page views/anticipated page views
Then, multiply them as follows:
Visitors x Page size x Page views x 30 days = Monthly Web site Transfer
You should also throw in a small margin or error to take into account email traffic and your own uploads to the server. If you offer downloads, you should add the following:
Average/Expected downloads x File Size x 30 days = Monthly Download Transfer

Unlimited Plans
Bandwidth is very expensive. All hosts are limited by their own allocations. To use the bridge analogy again, what happens is each visitor to your site will be given a smaller lane to transfer the data, creating many tiny lanes therefore making passage “unlimited.” The more visitors you have, the smaller each lane will be, which makes each visitor wait a little longer for the page to load. It’s important to know what your Web host provides and determine a plan that can appropriately handle your business’ specific needs.


Reducing Transfers
You can also reduce your transfer amount by building simpler, more efficient Web sites and optimizing your graphics.
· Refrain from fancy flash presentations or streaming audio.
· Use CSS, call JavaScript externally instead of embedding in every page.
· Remove unwanted tags, white space and comments.
· Limit your META tags to those absolutely necessary. Having too many keywords is not search engine friendly and many search engines only review the first few and ignore the rest.
· Another good idea is to cache your Web site and set an expiry date in the HTTP headers so the browser will refresh the content after a certain amount of time.

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Boris Mordkovich is the Director of Operations for MordComm, Inc., a New York-based firm that develops and operates online ventures that help small to mid-size businesses succeed in their online ventures. Their properties include: AdWatcher: Ad Monitoring & Tracking and PayPerClickUniverse: Pay Per Click Search Engines Guide.


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