How Bandwidth and Server Load Effects Web Hosting?

When it comes to your website, there are two things that will greatly affect the performance, the server load, and bandwidth.

When we talk about bandwidth we are simply referring to the available network capacity.  In other words, the maximum traffic that can go back and forth at any given time. This can also apply to a certain amount of traffic for a period of time, like a week.

When you are on the internet and files are transferred, or anything is being passed from one place to the other, you are using bandwidth.  This bandwidth can be looked at as pipes that are used for water to flow through.  Pipe comes in different sizes and each size only holds so much water.  Your total bandwidth could be considered to be the total size of your pipe.

The other type of bandwidth measure is the time cap.  There are companies that share a certain amount of bandwidth between a given number of clients.  Each client can only utilize so much bandwidth per month. This stops one site from using a large amount of the network capacity.

Server load is a term that is a much more generic concept and refers to CPU utilization.  The part of your computer that carries out the instructions from programs is called the Central Processing Unit. The CPU tells the memory to perform in a certain way, and tells the computer to move files from one area to another.

The total amount of use that each of those components put on the CPU, is referred to as Server Load.

With the disk drive, the computer gets files in pieces which are then assembled by the memory component and shown on the monitor.  All this is done under the instruction of the Central Processing Unit.

On all computers the memory space that they have is a set amount. Without a large amount of memory, it often happens that there is not enough memory for all programs to run at the same time. There are, built into your computer, special routines for each system that control who gets how much of the memory and for how long. This is how the computer shares its resources within competing programs.

You can say how “loaded” the server is by noting how heavily it is used by one or many programs at the same time.

As a web site owner, knowing this information is important to you so you can understand why the server may become unresponsive or slow.  This knowledge will allow you to get the most out of your server.

This information allows you to know that when you are sharing a server with other sites, the traffic that they are getting affects the way your site may work at any given time.  If this begins to happen to your site, you can request the company move you to a less used server. This may give the company and idea that one of the sites you are sharing the bandwidth with, is misbehaving and using more than their share.

The bottom line – the best way to avoid this problem is to have a dedicated server.