Hosting Performance

Firstly, determine the disk space and traffic you need.

How much disk space?

Small or medium-sized websites need at least 10MB to 100MB of disk space.

If we only consider HTML pages, their average size is very small. Perhaps even less than 1KB. However, if you look at the size of the graphics used on the page, you will find that the size of most images is much larger than the page itself.

Adding images and other space-consuming elements, each page will occupy 5KB to 50KB of server space.

If you plan to use a large number of images and graphic elements (not including audio files and video files), you may need more disk space.

Before choosing a provider, first clarify the disk space you need.

Monthly Traffic

Small or medium-sized websites require at least 1GB to 5GB of data transfer per month.

You can calculate it like this: multiply the average page size by the expected number of page views per month. Assuming your average page size is 30KB and the expected page views are 50,000 pages, you will need 0.03MB x 50,000 = 1.5GB.

Larger commercial websites typically consume no less than 100GB of traffic per month.

Before signing a contract with a hosting provider, you need to clarify the following issues:

  • What is the monthly traffic limit?
  • Will the website be closed if you exceed the limit?
  • Do you need to pay extra fees if you exceed the limit?
  • Is the hosting easy to upgrade?

Connection Speed

Visitors usually use modems to access your website, but hosting providers have extremely high connection speeds.

In the early days of the Internet, T1 connections were considered very fast connections. Today's connection speeds are much faster.

1 byte equals 8 bits (this is the number of bits used to transmit a character), low-speed modems can transmit approximately 14,000 to 56,000 bits per second (14 to 56 kilobits per second), that is, 2,000 to 7,000 characters per second, or about 1 to 5 pages of text.

A kilobit (Kb) is 1024 bits. A megabit (Mb) is 1024 kilobits. A gigabit (Gb) is 1024 megabits.

This is the connection speed currently used on the Internet:

Name Connection Speed per second
Modem Analog 14.4-56Kb
D0 Digital(ISDN) 64Kb
T1 Digital 1.55Mb
T3 Digital 43Mb
OC-1 Optical Carrier 52Mb
OC-2 Optical Carrier 156Mb
OC-12 Optical Carrier 622Mb
OC-24 Optical Carrier 1.244Gb
OC-48 Optical Carrier 2.488Gb

Before signing the contract, you can try other websites on the provider's server and it is also a good practice to communicate with other customers.