What does actually bandwidth mean? It is the a term typically used to describe the amount of information (or data) that your web site sends to your visitors over a spesific amount of time, usually a month. Every time a vistor comes to your site, the web server sends the front page, with all the images and text, to the browser of the visitor. If you have two images that are each 0.05 mb, just there you have used 0.10 mb of bandwidth for that page view. Add up all the page views and you will have your bandwidth usage.
Now, some web hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth hosting, but can they actually deliver unlimited?
Unlimited, endless, unrestricted, bandwidth
For starters, there is no such thing as “unlimited� bandwidth, strictly speaking. If there was, all web sites in the world could be run through the same internet backbone connection. Unlimited, in the most formal use of the word, means unlimited, endless, unrestricted, bandwidth.
Secondly, at what point does your bandwidth usage result in the server you are on being over loaded? Long before “unlimited�, that’s for sure. Think about it, if Google were to sign up for a $7.99 web hosting account, with unlimited bandwidth and storage, the web hosting company would have to shut down business the second Google went online on their server (if such a server were to exist).
Is it unethical?
The people discussing the use of the term Unlimited Bandwidth often argue that it is unethical to use a term they actually can’t deliver on. I disagree with this argument, as the term is not implied to be read literally.
My opinion is that it is not unethical per say. The customer usually reads the term in context of the price they are paying, and type of hosting they are purchasing. It is also stated in the terms of use what you can expect to be able get out of your account. Slapping an Unlimited Bandwidth sign on a dedicated server offer, however, is completely different then on a shared, small business, hosting account. With the former you would reasonably expect to be able to utilize as much bandwidth as the dedicated server can handle, and with the latter you would reasonably expect to utilize as much bandwidth as the shared server account can handle, relative to the other accounts on the server
Web hosts better provide a lot of bandwidth
And that is where a reasonable argument lays. If you are a web host that offers unlimited bandwidth, you better be sure to be able to handle a web site that actually has a respectable amount of traffic. Too many customers of shared hosting have complained about their site being taken down by their web host the minute they actually get any traffic worth talking about. No notice, just wham, down. Others have received a notice, either before or after, but that really doesn’t cut it.
Choose a web host that helps you when your site grows
A good web hosting company goes to great lengths to ensure that a customer is able to host even a large and popular web site on a shared hosting account. That is, if they advertise with unlimited bandwidth.