RE: [PHP-WIN] Bandwidth for webhosts

>Hi there > was wondering if anyone could tell me what it means when a >web host says that you get something like 10GB bandwidth for >web visitors/hits? That's a very strange way to put things... I think that person who stated that actually need to explain what (s)he meant with that. >How do they calculate the bandwidth? Bandwidth is a measurement of how much information (theoretical) that could be put through a communication channel. It has the dimension <information bits>/<time units>. A communication channel can be something physical, like a copper or fiber cable or a little more abstract physical things like a transmission wave (electromagnetic waves, a.k.a. radio waves). But the bandwidth could also be referring to an abstract communication channel in a physical communication channel. This is done by dividing the physical channel into several subchannels, these subchannels will then have there own bandwidth. But the sum of the subchannels bandwidth can never exceed the total bandwidth of the physical channel. Hence bandwidth is the measurement of how much information you maximal can send through a communication channel of any sort. Just because the bandwidth could be measured to be X with a certain communication channel does NOT mean that you will have a TRANSMISSION rate of X. Normally you will suffer with the transmission rate, because of things like overhead information (like information that belongs to the transmission protocol and error correction performed by the transmission protocol). If you reach a transmission rate of about 90% of the bandwidth, then you should be happy. BUT this is not entirely true: some transmission protocol can compress data, and then you will have a VIRTUAL transmission rate that actually can exceed the bandwidth of the channel!! But the PHYSICAL transmission rate of the compressed data can NEVER exceed the bandwidth of the channel. Well, anyhow we have to relate this to your question too. You question was: 'How can they calculate this?' As you understand from my explanation, they CAN NOT calculate a bandwidth like that, since it violates the definition of what a bandwidth actually are. But they can, on the other hand, calculate a sort of "transmission rate" on the channel. And this might simply be calculated as: <number hits> * <number of bits to perform a hit> / <time> Regards, Anders - which are sorry for this off topic message