If you are in to web hosting or if you are starting your own website, you would encounter the word ‘bandwidth’ a lot of times. But what exactly is bandwidth? Bandwidth is the measure of the amount of data that is being transmitted over a website connection. If you wanted to set up your own website then you should know how much bandwidth is needed for your site and choose a web hosting plan with an appropriate bandwidth.
You may often encounter the term “unlimited bandwidth”. This may sound good to your ears. Everything with the world ‘unlimited’ may sound enticing. But technically, there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth.
A broadband company is responsible for sending internet connection, and you never hear them claim that they can offer unlimited MB/ sec. In the same note, a hosting company cannot offer such a thing as unlimited bandwidth. Most web hosting company doesn’t even have their own access lines, so how can they claim to offer unlimited bandwidth if this is the case?
There is actually a catch when one web hosting company offers “unlimited bandwidth”. There are some website owners who have their website disconnected because they violated one of the terms and services policies when it comes to traffic or bandwidth. They would often say “that you have exceeded your bandwidth” and no refund would be handed back to you.
So if you happen to read unlimited bandwidth to any of the hosting plans that you are checking out. Make sure to read the company’s acceptable use policy and the company’s term of service.
When choosing a bandwidth for your website, the first thing that you need to estimate is the traffic of your website. You should also know the types of data that you would use for your site. Here are some questions that you can use as a guideline:
* How many visitors would you think you have?
* How many of your web pages would have frequent visitors?
* How much storage data would your text, images and script files use?

Here are the types of data that may need a large bandwidth:
* Audio and video files
* Computer applications
* Downloadables
* Flash website
* Virtual reality programs
* 3D audio-video files

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