what different between bandwidth and data transfer?

[dongdong]

May i know what different between bandwidth and data transfer?

[michaelfoo]

Data Transfer:
Data transfer is the amount of digital data that is moved from one place to another in a given time. Outbound traffic from a web site, with the exception of e-mail, is considered to be data transfer. This is also known as bandwidth, the quota of data transfer that you are allowed each month. Anytime someone downloads, uploads, or visits your website - they are consuming a portion of that quota for the month.

Bandwidth:
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps.

Summarised from Google Definition

Thanks.

[vincevincevince]

michaelfoo - that's perfect.

When looking at bandwidth - just be careful of 'unlimited bandwidth' and 'unmetered bandwidth'.

'unlimited bandwidth' is an impossibility. There is no way that it's possible to have no upper limit on the transfer speed.

'unmetered bandwidth' normally refers to unlimited data transfer. Expect slow servers with bandwidth caps, and expect to be thrown out if you actually use an enormous amount of bandwidth!

[dongdong]

Why some hosting provider can provide high bandwidth or data transfer(shared Hosting) like 200GB, 300GB, 400GB ....500GB per monthly?

Really, they can provide until 500GB bandwidth per monthly with cheap price?

Thank You.

[michaelfoo]

Hi dongdong,
They can do that simply because they are overselling

I'm lazy to define that for you so here is what Google Definition says:
Oversell: As with overbooking, it is when an airline takes more reservations than it has seats on an aircraft.

Slightly translated by me: The hosting provider puts more clients on the same server than it has the sufficient resource for the actual number of clients. When all the clients use up the server resource together, the server will most likely crash, otherwise it'll be fine.

Hope that helps!

ps: Let me give you a rough idea, normally a dedicated server comes with around 1000GB or 1TB of transfer only.

[vincevincevince]

michaelfoo - out of interest - can you tell me where your hosting company has its servers? and what the costs are for renting dedicated servers?

[michaelfoo]

We have our servers in the US.

The cost differs from datacenter to datacenter, and according to the specifications. You can check out these providers:
www.ev1servers.net
www.theplanet.com
www.gnax.net
www.dedicatednow.com

These are a few providers with good reputation.

Hope that helps.

[vincevincevince]

thanks michaelfoo - I was hoping you had your servers in Malaysia. It's so hard to find servers in Malaysia! Can you help with getting .com.my registered for non Malaysian companies?

[michaelfoo]

Hi vince,
The reasons why most local providers chose to have US servers are due to:
1. US servers have a more reasonable price tag
2. US network is the preferred network for international clients
3. Something that doesn't sound too good to us, but the fact is, US network is more reliable.

However, recently due to the TMNet Streamyx users international peering issues, many local hosting providers are starting to consider local servers, simply because that their US servers appeared down to Streamyx users and this has created a lot of havoc to the local providers. As such, hunting for a local hosting package shouldn't be a problem anymore -- Unfortunately we still do not have local servers

.MY domains can be registered using another company's information (Borang D from SSM) but the ownership of the domain will belong to the registrant company's but not the foreign company's. This can be a headache if the registrant company is not reliable.

Thank you!

[corallinkz]

thanks for the info.

anyway, i think other reasons many peoples go to local coz about legal/types of files hosted in...

US law very strictly about this...
especially when u got some films or copyrighted stuff there.

[michaelfoo]

thanks for the info.

anyway, i think other reasons many peoples go to local coz about legal/types of files hosted in...

US law very strictly about this...
especially when u got some films or copyrighted stuff there.

Exactly. Another reason why our local network is not as stable as US. The reason is simply because sites like autosurf, high yield investment program, torrent... etc are all hosted outside US, some are hosted in MY/SG network.

Actually the reasons why US disallows these contents are not solely dependant on copyright. Don't forget these sites (especially hyip) are often the target of DoS attacks. Therefore, there is a higher chance of network instability in where the sites are hosted.

Thanks.