What does bandwidth mean in hosting? How to See How Much Bandwidth You Are Using?

Bandwidth is one of the most important factors that web developers and website owners use to decide which web host to use. This is because bandwidth determines how quickly files on a website can reach users in a particular amount of time. So, let’s try to answer the question in a simple way: What is bandwidth in hosting? We would say that bandwidth is simply the amount of information that your website can send to people in a certain amount of time. Most of the time, it is measured in Gigabytes (GB), and web developers and website owners choose which plan to buy based on how much traffic they need and how much bandwidth the band offers. Bandwidth is also like a line that can carry a certain amount of water. If the pipe is bigger, it makes sense that it will carry more water. 

In addition to the things, we’ve already talked about, bandwidth is an important part of hosting because it sets the stage for how a website will grow, perform, and even cost in the future. So, it’s just as important to keep an eye on the bandwidth as it is to choose a hosting plan with enough bandwidth for your website. In this piece, we’ll focus on bandwidth and show you how to check how much of it you’re using. So, this post is for you if you want to buy shared hosting from a company or if you already have a website and want to know how to check your bandwidth use to make it run better. 

1. Before you check how much internet you’re using, figure out how much you need

Anyone with a website needs to follow this rule and check their present usage. This is one way to measure how well your hosting works for your website. If you don’t have a website yet, don’t worry. This is a good way to learn how to choose a plan that will get the amount of traffic you want. When figuring out how much internet you need, three things are very important. One is the number of people who visit the website every month. Two is the number of times a page is viewed on the website. Three is the size of the web page. 

Please use Google Analytics to see how many people visit your site and how many pages they look at. That will give you an idea of how many people go to your website every month and how many pages they look at. Also, use gtmetrix to check the size of all the pages on your site. 

Now, multiplying all of these numbers—monthly users, average page views, and average size of web pages—will give you your website’s bandwidth. 

Your hosting plan’s bandwidth should make up a little more than half of this whole estimate. There should be some extra room in case you need to add more pages to the website. 

How to see how much internet you are using? 

You will need to log in to your cPanel account and go to Awstats to see how much data your website is using. Here, you can see a list of the names and/or subdomains that are part of your account. If you have an SSL certificate setup for set domains, you will see both HTTP and HTTPS versions of your website. This is important because if you force HTTPS links on your website, all the bandwidth will be used by that version of the website. 

Even though the Awstats page looks old, it will give you all the information you need about bandwidth. At the top of the page, you can see how far back you need to look at the statistics. To update the stats, you will need to turn on the update now button, which is turned off by default. To do this, go to the cPanel File manager and do the following: 

Now, go to the folder /home/username/tmp/awstats by clicking on it. Right-click the.conf file you want to add the update button to, and then click “Edit.” 

Find the line that says AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=0 and change the 0 to a 1. 

Click “Save Changes” and then “Exit.” 

Now, the Update Now Button will appear next to the Last Update date if you re-enter the stats for that site and refresh the page. You will be able to see a lot more about how your data is being used. 

This will give you a full picture of how much bandwidth is used in relation to these factors and how your usage was on a certain day and why. These data help you find patterns of use and, if necessary, reduce the size of your web page. 

Locales history: You can also find out which country or place has the most users and which one uses the most bandwidth. Again, this can help you keep track of which country is using your internet the most.

Hosts: The hosts of the top 25 will tell you in detail which IPs of users they have and how many hits and how much bandwidth they have used. 

Robots and spiders: You can also find out in depth about all the good and possibly bad search engines and bots that crawl your site. These numbers aren’t shown anywhere else in Awstats, so you can look at them as a separate statistic to find out how much bandwidth your website uses that has nothing to do with people. 

Visits and how long they last: If you want to see how involved your users are, you can do the same thing in awstats by looking at visits and how long they last. It will tell you how many people left your site after reading it and how long it took them to do so. For example, if you first check that 40% of the people who go to a website leave within the first 15–30 seconds, that tells you that maybe the people weren’t that interested in what was on the page to begin with. Or something else, based on what those websites were trying to do. 

There are also other things, like the type of file and downloads that used the most data, as well as when and why those things were used. But when it comes to checking how much data is being used, they are usually not the most important thing. 

Conclusion

Now that you know what bandwidth is in hosting and how to check how it’s being used, we think you’ll keep the above points in mind when you buy hosting from a provider or even when you’re keeping the performance of your website in terms of bandwidth. We hope that this article has given you a clear idea of how to check how your bandwidth is being used and what you can do next. If you have more ideas about this, please feel free to share them in the comments part below. We will answer them right away and add them to the list. For now, keep reading!