The following examples are used to illustrate how much bandwidth you could expect to use on your web site. Simply defined, bandwidth is the measurement of data transferred from the site’s server to the visitor’s PC when they request to view your site through their browser.

You can model your own traffic with our Interactive Bandwidth Calculator, or read the examples below for a more in-depth discussion.

Before reviewing the examples, please make note of the following:
The numbers used in the examples below are for a single page hit (for the home page), not multiple page hits within the site. A single page hit comprises of many smaller components - the page itself, each individual image appearing on that page, as well as any CGI scripts. Sometimes, even text on a page is actually saved as an image to guarantee that the text appears in the same font and size no matter what the settings are on the visitor’s PC. And, occasionally sites intense with graphics split large images into multiple files to help them load faster. So, what you think you see on a site might not be the way it really is "behind the scenes," so to speak.

Please note that every day web sites change on the Internet, so what you see today for the following sites may differ from the details we have listed below on the date we reviewed these sites.

1 GB (Gigabyte) = 1024 MB (Megabytes)
1 MB (Megabyte) = 1024 KB (Kilobyte)
1 KB (Kilobytes) = 1024 Bytes

An averaged sized web page is usually around 30 KB, shown in example 3 below.

1) Graphic intensive site – www.disney.com Date reviewed: 12/13/1999 Total components: 15     1 page     14 images Total disk size of these components: 72.6 KB     30.3 KB for page     42.3 KB for images

Example:
Each 50,000 hits to the site * 72.6 KB = 3.5 GB bandwidth used (just for the home page)

---

2) Mixture of file types – www.microsoft.com Date reviewed: 12/13/1999 Total components: 14     1 page     10 images     3 javascript files Total disk size of these components: 60.1 KB     17.6 KB for page     15.6 KB for images     26.9 KB for javascript files

Example:
Each 50,000 hits to the site * 60.1 KB = 2.9 GB bandwidth used (just for the home page)

---

3) Very few graphics – www.yahoo.com Date reviewed: 12/13/1999 Total components: 4     1 page     3 images Total disk size of these components: 27.6 KB     19.6 KB for page     8.0 KB for images

Example:
Each 50,000 hits to the site * 27.6 KB = 1.3 GB bandwidth used (just for home page)

---

Email Bandwidth

Here are some examples of how much bandwidth email consumes as it travels from the originator to the receiver.

An average sized email is usually less than 3 KB.

1) Normal email size, high volume
5000 a day * 30 days = 150,000 a month
150,000 * 3 KB = 0.429 GB of transfer a month

2) Large email size, high volume
5000 a day * 30 days = 150,000 a month
150,000 * 6 KB = 0.858 GB of transfer a month

3) Very large email size, moderate volume
1000 a day * 30 days = 30,000 a month
30,000 * 10 KB = 0.286 GB of transfer a month