Bandwidth Question
 

1 mbps equals 320 GBs of transfer? I forget the conversion.

about yes.

:1orglaugh

It does not go like that.
Two completely different systems.

Might be 10 gbs might be 10.000 gbs...

Yes 1 Mbps is basically equal to 320 gigs.

Yup that's what I always understood also.

And they are not different systems to my knowledge.

thats if the line is maxed out 24/7 and pages are loading UBER fucking slow..

Realistically its prolly somewhere around 240-270 i would say

What?

Yep, thats it.

here is a link to a <a href="http://www.crnc.net/network/bandwidthconversion/?convmethod=2&bwamount=1&submit=Submit&convresults =0">conversion tool</a>

Well, not exactly, 8 bits (1's and 0's) makes 1 byte, which means:
8 megabits makes 1 megabyte
1 mbit/sec / 8 = 0.125 mbyte/sec
0.125 MB * 60 secs * 60 mins * 24 hours * 30.5 days = 329,400 MB
329,400 MB / 1024 = 321.68 GB in 30.5 days (one month).

In a word. NO.

No, no, no, no, no. :)

Too many people have this completely, totally, and uncomprehendable misunderstanding about the way this works. It leads to MANY people not knowing what they are "really getting", and being totally confused when hosting overages hit.


320GB is the approximate MATHEMATICAL MAXIMUM you can get per 1Mbit/sec for a 30 day calendar month. THEORETICAL!

This will only happen if you have absolutely 100% the EXACT same traffic ALL day long, for ALL month. This *never* happens. Never.

If you are doing standard web traffic, you have approximately 60% more traffic during the "peak times" then you do at your lowest traffic periods. If your peak is exactly 1Mbit/sec this means that during your slow times you are only pushing 400Kbit/sec. Uh oh. This added up and averaged over a month means you are now actually using only about 260-160GB/mo of that theoretical "max" you can get out of 1Mbit/sec. The number changes from site to site, your traffic may be less bursty than some others, etc. However, looking at 100Mbit of shared per-GB billed shared customers on our network, the global average over that for us is about 220GB billed per mbit used.

Now wait! Your hosting provider must be MAKING OUT!!! I mean shit, you are paying for "1mbit/sec" and only using it 30-40% of the time!! I want my money back! Sorry. Doesn't work this way. Hosting providers (and backbone carriers, and consumer ISP's, etc. etc.) pay for PEAK CAPACITY. Meaning, when you use that 1Mbit/sec during your peaks they HAVE to have the infrastructure to support it without it slowing down. This means that during off-peak times, they have gigabits of unused capacity that they need to keep around for the peak times. Add to that, room for unexpected traffic spikes (customer gets listed on the AOL frontpage, new york times, whatever) and your host has to keep even MORE free capacity to be able to cover those peak usage times without slowdown.

So in reality, if you are peaking at X Mbit/sec, your host is paying for it. The unused time doesn't matter to them. This is why, in almost all cases (if your host isn't an idiot) per-GB pricing is WAY more than per-Mbit if you applied the "320GB per mbit" math on it. Why? Because 320GB is NOT 1mbit! You could use 5mbit for 3 days and then stop for the rest of the month, and only be billed for 300GB. Your host is billed for that 5Mbit, and now your account is a huge loser. Per-GB billing is a RISK most hosts take on, and bank on mathematical averages to even out over time and volume.

I hope that all makes sense. Please, please do not pepetuate this "320GB equals 1mbit" myth any longer. By the math, it does. In the real world, there is not a single case it ever will*.


Thanks! :)

-Phil


(*) For sake of argument. We have ONE customer out of hundreds who REALLY DOES peg their capped connection 24/7. He comes damned close to 320GB per mbit, but he's also trying to stuff 3-4 times more traffic down the pipe than there is capacity during peak times, and performance SUCKS for his end-users.

So you admit it!!!!!!!!!! 320GB does equal 1mbit :)

lol

Only if you buy MY mbits!! Any other people's megabits are LOW CAPACITY. You need to buy our specially designed HIGH CAPACITY megabits and you will surely get 320GB out of them!

:)

-Phil

Long story short, on an uncapped line or even a 5mbit capped line, 3mbit average equals 965 gigs per month and exactly 321.68 gigs per mbit. This thread will grow a 2nd page like this.

I just checked my network stats

yesterdays total gig throughput * 30 (for monthly) / 95th percentile for network

comes out to 291GB so i would say that 320GB figure yes is a little high, which is why I tell all my customers 300GB = 1Mbit :) and that's what I stick by!

Uhm, duh? Hello?

"Averaged" per-mbit billing *IS* PER-GB BILLING!

How is this so hard to understand? They are just different monikers for the EXACT SAME billing system.

An "averaged" mbit should cost more than a 95th percentile or capped mbit for obvious reasons. It DOES cost someone somewhere more, but some hosts either take the loss, or have differing deals w/ some upstreams.

Capped 1mbit will simply NOT equal 320GB. Good luck swinging it.

-Phil

Zagi - You have really "good" customers then. :)

Our average customer bursts a lot, so our average is way less. Like I said, it's probably around 250GB or so network-wide.

We could of course expand this into things "most" per-GB virtual type plans don't bill for but hosts pay for, such as TCP overhead. :) But then it would just get confuzzling!

-Phil

Oh and by the way there's also such a thing as full duplex, we sell unmetered 10mbits as full duplex, meaning you can push 10mbit in and 10mbit out, it equals to more than 3,210 gigs per month, closer to 3,500 actually if you consider in:out ratio as 1:9 (theoretical, because these are indeed capped lines, and with another theory you can push 6,420 gigs through this since it's 20mbit total).

If you bill for both directions, then you are in the MINORITY of hosts.

Period.

Most hosts bill based on the HIGHER of the two directions (in webhosting case, almost always without exception outbound).

Of course you could do 1Mbit/sec in both directions on a capped line, but you don't get "more" that way really, as what use does a webhosting customer have for inbound bits?

If anyone out there wants cheap inbound, let me know. I'll sell it for pennies on the dollar compared to outbound. :)

-Phil

Your all wrong, here's the formula...

http://www.amateurmarket.net/promo/Owned/formula.gif