Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

If you spend any time surfing the net, you have seen the dreded message "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded" when accessing some pages.

Most people just think the website is not there, but it is. You just can't get to it because the site had too many visitors for the datatransfer the owner is paying for, so the isp has closed it.

This can be devestating to the webmaster since the time it is down, there are no sales and can be removed from the search indexes.

So what is bandwidth?

Think of bandwidth like a jar full of jelly beans on the receptionists desk. Each time someone takes one or two or a handfull the number left in the jar is less untill eventually it is empty untill someone refills it.

Bandwidth works the same. The site owner buys a certain amount of bandwidth each month and each time a page is viewed the amount left is less. If visitors eat less jellybeans or pages then the bandwith jar stays full and everyone is happy.

But if you have a big fat robot crawling the pages and eating jellybeans the amount of jellybeans eaten will be much greater.

Since you have no control of how many jellybeans each person will eat, you need to have enough in the jar so it wont run out.

If a bus load of politicians shows up and they all eat some jellybeans then the jar will empty out fast and the regulars wont have any when they show up.

It's all a big mess because bots can eat jelly beans and you have to pay for it. If you don't the website could close and you lose any potential that you would have had.

If you can't monitor how much you use, your hosting provider could tell you that you used a million dollars worth and you have to payfor it. How do you know any better?

Or you can use a company like pageBuzz that does not have any bandwidth limits and your site will never close for overages.

pageBuzz manages use over all customers and allocates bandwidth based on combined volume. This means pagebuzz customers wil never see the dreded message "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded".

Of course here are limits to systems that offer unlimited bandwidth, the biggest is they know you wont use much. If you do, you need a different solution. But for the average business, having the knowledge that the site wont close when the jellybean jar is empty is reassuring.

For high bandwidth consumers, there are options out there that can solve the problem also. Dedicated bandwidth solutions like T-1 lines never close, but are extremely expensive.

What every your plan is, try to avoid an empty jelly bean jar.