# bandwidth



## Acer2000 (Sep 17, 2006)

Shared hosting generally gives 2500 GB of bandwidth usage, I don't know much about servers, but is it correct that if I build my own server, that I can overcome the problem with bandwidth usage? In other words can I have unlimited bandwidth usage if i have my own server? Thanks you


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## DJ-Zep (Mar 11, 2006)

If you mean using a computer from your house as a server when you say "your own server," then no. Your ISP usually alots you a certain amount of bandwidth. If you go over that bandwidth, you'll get charged fees. 2500 GB is quite a lot of bandwidth. If you don't plan on having a big multimedia site such as YouTube or MTV.com, then you should be fine as far as bandwidth goes.


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## Acer2000 (Sep 17, 2006)

Hi DJ,

Thank you for your reply. Well, I am planning to set up a site similar to mytube


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## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

There is no such thing as "Unlimited" bandwidth. Bandwidth is fairly expensive once you go over your allotment. Most shared hosting companies can't offer 2500GB to EACH and every customer that decided to use that much bandwidth. They're "overselling" the bandwidth that they have on the assumption that 90% of users will use only 10% of the resources. If even 3 or 4 of those customers used 2500GB of bandwidth, the hosting company would have a HUGE overage bill to pay. It's usually around $1 - $2 per GB depending on on the bandwidth is calculated (95th percentile, mbit/sec, actual usage/GB transfered, etc). So, if they went over by 3000GB, that's $3,000 of fee's to pay in addition to the normal charges. Again, it all depends on how the billing is handled. 

If you were to host your own server, you'll never find any data center that will give you unlimited bandwidth. And you'll quickly find that bandwidth isn't cheap. A site like YouTube needs to make money to cover the costs involved. I know they have some ads, but the ones I've seen are fairly small and it doesn't look like they make much money on them.


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