Can someone please explain this bandwidth thing to me in english? I have an idea regarding what it is but I'm not sure.

Is there anything I can do, besides get a host that isn't free, to my site so the bandwidth limit will not be exceeded (i.e. take some pictures off of my page)

Does anyone know if the free hosting @ tripod is especially bad with bandwith?

My site is important to my fiancee's business... we don't want a lot of people getting the following message:

The Tripod page you are trying to reach has exceeded its hourly bandwidth limit.

What is the link to the site?

I would recommend any other hosting besides free hosting. Paid is much better.

But aside from that...

image removal would help so you are heading in the right direction. You could also try reducing the size of the images so it isn't such a drain on the bandwidth.

Basically anytime a file is called to display in a viewer's browser it uses bandwidth.

This includes images, html, text, etc. Anything that displays.

Each one of these has a size so say your HTML page is 5kb and your images are each 20kb but you have 5 of them on the page.

Then each time the page is viewed in a web browser is uses up 105kb of bandwidth.

now if this page was viewed 1000 times it would equal 105000 kb or about 105mb.

Now with just 10 of those pages like that on your site each getting 1000 page views in a month then it would be equal to about 1Gb of bandwidth per month.

What is your limit per day/week/month or however they do it?

Bandwidth simply refers to how much data is being transferred over the network from one computer to another. It's a measure of quantity. In more practical terms, it can be thought of as the amount of files (pictures, songs, reports, videos) coming to or going from your computer/site.

And yes if you want to reduse your bandwidth usage remove as many pictures and large files as possible. and try to save files in the smallest format as possible.

Of course you would save alot of trouble if you just paid for a host. There are alot of reliable cheap ones around these days.

Cheers

Drachewyn you must of been replying at the same time as me

Originally posted by Chopper
Drachewyn you must of been replying at the same time as me

Yeah but mine was a lot more long winded than yours yet says the same thing...

Hmm maybe I should work on not explaining things in so much detail.

They have an hourly bandwidth limit? So, if the limit is exceeded, I am guessing you have to wait an hour before the site can be viewed again...

Every time someone views your website or you upload with ftp, bandwidth is used. Think of bandwidth as being a 5 gallon bucket of water (please, keep the snickering to a minimum). Now suppose you are told that this 5 gallon bucket of water must last you a month. Every time someone dips a cup of water to drink, it takes from the bucket. The water in the bucket is data. When water is moved from the bucket, it is the same as data being transferred.

If you pass out water to a lot of people (viewers of your website) you will notice the bucket starts emptying faster. It may occur to you to use smaller cups when passing out the water, so that it will last longer. This is what Chopper meant by making pictures have a smaller format. If they are smaller, the bandwidth alotment lasts longer.

Looking back, this was one stupid-sounding analogy I just made. LOL

FTP, http (page views), email, etc. all count as bandwidth usage. Text uses less bandwith than pictures.

If you are using enough bandwidth so that it reaches the hourly limit at Tripod, it is going to be difficult, even with optimizing the pictures, to meet that limit.

-Lamar

/me snickers

Another way to reduce the amount of bandwidth is to make your pages cache friendly... this is much easier to do with content that doesn't change so much but I also do it to some degree with my own web pages (that have some dynamic areas). Having a host that supports PHP or ASP is useful if you want to control the cache options of each document through modifying the headers and serving the content through a script - just so you know this is an option... how much bandwidth it saves depends on your content and how it is being used.

Having said that, I'd have to agree that you really should host any important sites with a paid host...

Hi,

That was a beautiful explanation, Drache, and an interesting analogy by PerfectHost. I know that 0Catch, Tripod, Geocities, and Brinkster all have pretty stingy limits when it comes to transfer. I always knew that all four had daily limits (as if they weren't bad enough ), but hourly limits are ridiculous. But I guess it's just a sign that Tripod is simply losing too much money lol.