Preserved Topic: Web Hosting Costs

So we all know that we get like 100 different requests for web hosting each month, so I feel kind of bad for popping another one but this one has a little bit of a twist.

I am thinking of starting up a website relating to hosting largish files hosting to a multitude of people.

I am first wondering the requirements for bandwith.

Say a 100 k/s throttle. That would be 10 people who could have 10k per seconds of transfer. Which would end up at around 300 GB of transfer per month.

I see 10 K/s a decent amount of transfer per a person. However, if we up the number to 100 users connected we up the costs to 3 TB of transfer a month. Even futher to 1000 users we have 30 TB of transfer per month.

I could get 400 GB of transfer per month for $99 which would put us at $9900 for 1000 user connected at a consistant 10k per second. Which would at the same time require 10 MB of transfer per second.

Which is a considerable investment on a monthly level, and at the same time would require a huge pipe to get that kind of output.

Would there be a better way to go about this, at a better cost rate?
If I want to have a large number of users would this require something special. I really am not sure how this would best work. I am really looking at what would have to happen here. I am not even sure if this is a decent amount of processor. Maybe I would need much more than this. Say 100 MB a second pipe and maybe 100 TB of bandwidth? Who really knows. Does anyone have experience with something like this?

Well, first, your logic is somewhat flawed. Your calculations appear to be based on a set amount of traffic 24x7. But that's not the case. Those 10 people (or 100...) aren't grabbing files 24x7. Ok, you might have a couple that do that. But for the most part, it'll be busier during the day, then much quieter at night.

Most hosts (including us), can allocate more bandwidth as needed, billing for the additional amount. Unless you're absolutely sure that it's going to be going Mach 2 right from the start, just allocate a small amount of bandwidth and adjust as needed.

What about unlmited bandwidth? (real unlimited, not just a large ammount). How much does that cost?

Pugzly:

quote:

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for the most part, it'll be busier during the day, then much quieter at night.

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That would depend on where ones users were based and when they accessed the Internet and some business will also run 24 hours a day anyway.

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

I do understand that it will not be a constant as such. But I was trying to aim for the worst (best) case senario. I just wanted to run some number to see what I could come up with.

<edit>Further research showed that an OC3 line might be the correct bandwidth for the worst case. I could not find prices on this.</edit>



[This message has been edited by WarMage (edited 09-17-2002).]