Have you ever wonder how much your web hosting bandwidth is costing you? Or whether the bandwidth you are paying is optimal to your ROI? In this article, let me show you how you can calculate it.

Calculating the Gigabytes
First of all, you have to find out the total GB of data a single T1 connection can transfer, assuming that there’s no overhead or packet loss. (If you have stats for your packet loss or overhead, just subtract the overhead from the amount of data that can be transferred and continue with the equation.)

Assuming the optimal, a T1 connection can transmit data at 1.536 Mbps. To translate that to Bytes per second you divide by 8 (since there are 8 bits in every byte), and you find that a T1 can transfer data at 192 KBps. Multiply that by 60 seconds in a minute, times 60 minutes in an hour, and you will find that a T1 can transfer 691.2 MB (or 691,200 KB) of data per hour. Multiply that number by 24 to get to 16.589 GB per day.You need to multiply it by 30 days to get 497.664 GB monthly transfer.

Your cost per GB of data transferred—if a T1 connection costs $100/month—is 6 cents.

Here’s the Math:

  • 1.536 Mbps / 8 = 192 KBps (or 0.192 MBps)
  • 0.192 MB * (60sec * 60min) = 691.2 MB/hour
  • 691.2 MB * (24hours * 30days) = 497,664 MB (or 497.664 GB)/month
  • Hence, if a T1 connection costs $100/month, therefore:
  • $100 / 497.664GB = $0.20/GB

Note: To actually get the bandwidth cost, you need to find out how much your web hosting provider is paying for their bandwidth. Alternatively, you can use what your provider is charging you and mark it down 30% to get an estimate on how much the actual cost is.

Now, let us see you if you can apply it to your business metrics. :-)

Posted on July 26th, 2008. Categorized under Tutorials.
Follow any of the responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.