Data Transfer FAQ and
Calculations
What does "data transfer" mean?
In general, "data transfer" refers to any data transferred into
or out of a site. For example, graphics, text, movies, sound files, programs
that you or your visitors either download or upload are all considered to be
data. Every time a web surfer visits your web pages, data is transferred from
our server to their computer. As you want a lot of people to "hit" your site,
you want a plenty of data to be transferred!
Does data transfer include my
e-mail messages?
Your hosting account provides two ways to access your e-mail messages.
One way, using your POP3 e-mail client, is a type of data transfer, but this is
not included in calculating your hosting plan's data transfer totals. The
second way, using WebMail -- available on most hosting plans -- is included
when calculating data transfer totals. Because e-mail is being accessed through
a web browser using HTTP, it is counted as part of your data transfer
total.
Are the files that I upload or download using either FTP or HTTP
subject to the data transfer limits?
Using FTP with your account and
password is not part of data transfer limits. However, anonymous FTP (a type of
FTP access that lets users login to another computer without using an account) is subject to the
data transfer limits.
Also, transferring files from your site with HTTP as well
as sending and receiving e-mail through WebMail adds to your data
transfer totals.
Does
uploading and downloading web pages count as data
transfer?
If you upload your pages
through FTP using your account and your password, those uploaded pages do not
count toward your data transfer totals. However, web pages uploaded or
downloaded through Microsoft® FrontPage count as data transfer.
When editing web pages with FrontPage, we suggest that you upload only those
pages that you modified. This assures that uploading your web
pages will result in the smallest amount of data transfer. For additional
information, please read the on-line help in Microsoft
FrontPage.
How do I monitor my data transfer usage?
Use your
hosting account's Customer Usage Statistics web page to
monitor your monthly data transfer totals. Note also that these are the totals
that we use for billing purposes.
You can access your Customer
Usage Statistics page via
your_domain/cgi-bin/secure/custusage
Should I
use the Urchin, Analog or MKStats statistics packages to determine my data
transfer totals?
No. Although those statistics packages offer some
data transfer monitoring, they are all limited to monitoring only "http"
traffic. Thus, while very useful for determining web site "hits," they do not
provide a full accounting of your data transfer totals. For example, those
statistics programs do not monitor data transfers resulting from FTP downloads.
For the most accurate totals regarding your account's data transfer, always use
the totals found in your hosting account's Customer Usage
Statistics web page.
What are the odds that I could exceed
my data transfer limits?
The odds are small. In general, only 1 to 2
percent of our customers tend to exceed the limits. Certain types of web sites,
however, may have very high data transfer rates. For example, music sites and
entertainment sites often consume large amounts bandwidth. This can lead to
high data transfer rates. For those
hosting plans that include WebMail, sending and receiving of very large file
attachments on a regular basis can also consume bandwidth.
What happens if I exceed my data transfer limits?
As
usage reflects the number of people visiting your site ("hits"), exceeding the
limit would actually be good for you. If you believe that exceeding the limit
was a "one time only" event, you can simply pay for the overage, the additional
data transfer amount. However, if you think that your site could routinely
exceed your current plan's data transfer limits, you may want to consider
upgrading to a hosting plan that offers higher limits.
What happens if my business grows or
if I think a lot of people will be visiting my site?
Upgrade your plan.
It is very important to let us know whether you expect a large number of
visitors to your site. For example, if your site was featured on one of the
popular morning television shows, you could expect a dramatic increase in
visitations. The same would apply if you add a banner ad on a major site such
as Yahoo! or AOL. Likewise, popular sites that send flowers can expect heavy
usage on Mother's Day and Valentine's Day. To avoid any interruptions of your
service, please provide us with advanced notice of any days on which you expect
very high web site traffic. We can then plan for that traffic accordingly.
Realize also that, if you site often sends out e-mail messages that
contain large attachments, your monthly data transfer totals could be
substantial.
Why are there data transfer limits at
all?
Some web hosting companies say they do not have limits. We use
limits to protect those customers who use our shared hosting environments. In
such an environment, different web sites located on the same server share
system resources. If one site on the server uses too many resources, access to
the other sites that reside on the server could be adversely effected.
Portioning each site's resources assures that, if one site uses too many
resources, the other sites in that shared environment will not experience any
significant reduction in performance.
Think of it this way: Imagine that
you are at a large conference and, during a break, you want to make a quick
phone call. However, you misplaced your cell phone. So, you decide to call from
the lobby as it has several public phones. As this is a major conference, many
of the attendees also choose to make calls during the break. What are your
chances of getting an available phone? Well, if unlimited use of the phones is
allowed, your odds are not good. However, if the conference coordinator asks
each attendee to limit his or her phone time to, say, no more than five
minutes, your odds of soon being able to find an available phone rises
considerably. So, in that "shared phone environment," placing time limits on
individual phone users allows more users to make calls. This same logic applies
to placing limits on computing resources in a shared hosting environment. By
placing limits on those shared resources, no particular site can use so many
resources that other sites cannot function properly.
Theoretically,
there are always limitations on the resources that are available for use. If
you need more resources for your shared account, you can upgrade your account
to one that has higher resource limits. If you expect a consistent and very
high number of site visitors, you can elect to circumvent a shared environment
altogether by having your own dedicated server account. Such an account
provides you with all the system resources on a specific server.
I
don't want to buy more than I need, but I don't want to be hindered either. How
do I calculate my expected data transfer usage so that I can choose which plan
is best for me?
Web sites differ greatly in terms of content, file size,
number of pages, number of visitors, and so on. To help you to estimate your
monthly data transfer usage, we provide some example calculations in the
section called Data Transfer Usage Calculation. In addition,
you can always use the statistics options in Control Panel to assist you with
your estimates.
Data
Transfer Usage Calculation
Practical Information
Before starting your data transfer
calculations, you may need a basic understanding of some typical file sizes and
how they relate to data transfer usage. The smaller the total size of a Web
page, the quicker it downloads. Thus, many Web pages are often less than 30 KB
in size. A typical graphic file (say, a .GIF file) is about 20 KB to 30 KB in
size. However, graphics on Web pages are usually smaller, often no more than 15
KB to 20 KB of total graphics size per page. Sometimes Web graphic files may be
considerably larger than 20 KB. However, for most Web sites, using individual
graphics files larger than around 30 KB is not advised. Thus, to speed the
loading of your Web pages, reducing the size of your Web page graphics is
essential. You can reduce the size of your graphic images by using the image
optimizing feature located in your Control Panel.
One megabyte (1 MB) is
roughly 180,000 words of text -- about the size of a typical novel. An easy way
to calculate file size is by using multiples of 1000. Calculations based on
multiples of 1000 are somewhat easier than those that use the binary method, a
method based on multiples of 1024. However, there are still many calculations
that are performed using binary units of measurement.
The easy
way:
There are 1000 bytes per kilobyte (KB).
There are 1000 kilobytes per megabyte (MB) or 1,000,000 bytes.
There are
1000 megabytes per gigabyte (GB) or 1,000,000,000 bytes per
gigabyte.
The binary way:
There are 1024 bytes per kilobyte.
There are 1024 kilobytes per megabyte or 1,048,576 bytes.
There are 1024 megabytes per gigabyte or 1,073,741,824 bytes
per gigabyte.
The equivalences shown above will prove helpful in
understanding the calculations in the following section, Example
Calculations Using the Binary Way.
Example Calculations Using the Binary
Way
Estimating the Number of Files You
Can Transfer Per Month
Typically, data
usage is measured in bytes. The most common measures are: kilobytes, megabytes,
gigabytes, and terabytes. If you have an account that allows up to 2 GB of data
transfer per month and your average file size is 10 KB, then you can move
209,715 files per month. Here are the steps that we used to arrive at that
answer:
2,147,483,648 / 10,240 = 209,715 files per month
As another example, if you have an account that allows up to 5 GB of data transfer per month and your average file size is 100 KB, then you can move 53,558 files per month. Here are the steps that we used to arrive at that answer:
Estimating the Total
Amount of Data Transferred Per Month
Sometimes, you may find it more
useful to calculate the total amount of data that is transferred per month
instead of the number of individual files transferred per month. For instance,
if you use a hosting plan that allows 5 GB of data transfer per month, you may
want to estimate how close your site will come to that limit. If you are
transferring from another hosting company to ours, you probably already have a
good estimate of your average monthly total data transfer. In that case, you
probably will not need to perform the following calculation. However, if you
are starting a new site, you will need to take educated guesses regarding the
values that you need to enter into the equation mentioned below.
Realize
that the following equation applies to sites that are mostly informational.
Those sites do not offer many downloadable files. To estimate the total amount
of data your site may transfer per month, you would need to perform the
following calculation:
(Estimated # of visitors per month) * (Average
Web page size) * (Average # of pages viewed per visit) = Data Transfer Total
per Month
For example, let's say that you expect your site to attract an
average of 10,000 visitors per month. Further, your average Web page size is
about 35 KB. You also expect that visitors will view an average of 5 pages on
your site each time they visit. You calculation would be:
So, your estimated monthly data transfer
total is 1,750,000 KB -- or about 1.75 MB. This is well below your 5 GB
limit.
Using Our On-line Web
Statistics to Better Estimate Your Data Transfer Usage
If your site is very large or
if it has numerous files for visitors to download, you could still exceed your
monthly data transfer limit. Trying to estimate the monthly data transfer
totals for such a site is, at best, problematic. If your site provides large or
numerous files for download -- for example, MP3 files, Windows wallpaper files,
graphic files and so on -- you may first want to contact our Sales team. Ask
them for their expertise in recommending a plan that fits both your budget and
your site type (e-business, music download, etc.). Then, using the Control
Panel that we provide with your account, you can monitor the total amount data
transferred during the first weeks of your site's operation. The Control
Panel's extensive statistical information allows you to determine if your site
will exceed its monthly data transfer limit. If it appears that this will be
the case, you can call us to upgrade your hosting plan accordingly.
Additional Information
Measurement units: Even today, there is still a some
confusion about what kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, etc. actually mean.
Traditionally, the terms kilobyte, megabyte and gigabyte were used to express
the binary multiples of 1024, 1,048,576 and 1,073,741,824
bytes.
However, as people often think in decimal terms
rather than in binary terms, in December 1998, the International
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC: http://www.iec.ch) approved a new standard
for names and symbols for use in the fields of data processing and data
transmission. The standard was adopted in January 1999 by the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE: http://www.ieee.org). Thus,
kilobyte, megabyte and gigabyte should now be used to express the decimal
multiples of 1000, 1,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 bytes. A trio of new terms --
kibibyte, mebibyte and gibibyte -- are now used to express the binary multiples
of 1024, 1,048,576 and 1,073,741,824 bytes.
Quote and acknowledgment to
the authors, Fred Riley, University of Hull and Graham Davies, Thames Valley
University, of the following site:
www.ict4lt.org/en/en_glossary.htm.