500GB/Month of bandwidth. How fast is that, really?
This was originally posted over at EdgeBlog.
Recently, I was evaluating ISP’s for my hosting requirements. If you take a gander at 1-and-1, or most of the providers on the Personal Colocation site (and almost every other hosting provider in the world) they apportion your bandwidth in GB per month. Exactly what does this mean to people that are more familiar with buying bandwidth by the circuit? Exactly how much bandwidth is 500GB/Month? Is that equivalent to a T1 (DS1 or E1 for you euros?)
I’ve thrown together a little calculator for you to do some rudimentary math. Assuming an average of 30 days in a month, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. While the math is fairly straight-forward, it is by no means 100% accurate. Some months have less or more than 30 days, and on DST days, you get or lose an hour.
You should also be aware that while you are given some amount of transfer per month, this does not keep you from bursting above what the calculator shows. The calculator shows a “sustained” rate of data transfer. If you actually only use 1Mb/s of bandwidth, but you have a transfer allowance of 500GB/Month, you will be able to burst above the 1.5Mb/s sustained on occasion. 1-and-1, for instance, allows bursting up to 100Mb/s, but on their smallest VPS plan gives you 500GB/Month (roughly a T1/DS1 circuit sustained.)
Let me know if I’ve missed something.
-Jerry
