What Is Bandwidth and Traffic? Calculate Your Needs

Bits and bytes: Mbps vs. MB/s

Internet and network speeds are given in bits (Mbps, Gbps), while file sizes are given in bytes (MB, GB). One byte is 8 bits:

Because of protocol overhead and the other side's connection, the real speed stays a little below these values. That's why, on a 1 Gbps connection, a 1 GB file downloads in about 8–10 seconds at best.

What does port speed mean?

The port speed that server providers list is the upper limit of the connection that links the server to the network. A high port speed makes a difference when:

• Pages and files need to be served without choking during short traffic spikes.
• Large backups, updates and files need to be transferred quickly.
• Lots of players connect at the same time after a game update.

Port speed doesn't mean you can use that speed at all times and continuously; continuous use usually depends on the plan's fair use terms.

What does "unlimited traffic" mean?

Unlimited traffic, common in shared hosting plans, means there's no fixed quota on the amount of data per month. You don't pay extra at the end of the month or have your site shut down because your visitor numbers went up. However, as with any shared infrastructure, there are fair use rules: services that use the shared resources heavily enough to affect other customers may be limited. A typical website never comes close to these limits.

Calculating what a website needs

You can roughly calculate monthly traffic like this:

monthly traffic ≈ average page size × monthly page views

For example, a site with an average page size of 2 MB that gets 50,000 page views a month uses about 100 GB of traffic. Because visitors' browsers cache files, the real figure is usually lower.

The most effective ways to cut traffic and page size:

• Shrink your images. The WebP or AVIF format and correct sizing usually cut page size by more than half.
• Use caching. Browser caching keeps returning visitors from downloading the same files again.
• Use a CDN. When static files are served from a CDN, your main server's traffic goes down; see our What is a CDN? article for details.
• Keep large files separate. Use a separate storage or streaming service for videos and large downloads.

We cover other ways to speed things up in our How to speed up a website guide.

Bandwidth for game servers

Game servers send small, frequent packets for each player. In most games, the bandwidth a single player uses is far below what watching a video takes. That's why what really matters for game servers is:

• Low latency and packet loss: A server close to the players and a high-quality network. See our What is ping? article for details.
• DDoS protection: Attacks try to flood the connection with fake traffic thousands of times larger than the game traffic. No matter how high the bandwidth is, an unprotected server can't carry this traffic; see our What is DDoS? article for details.
• Sudden connections: Players downloading large modpacks or resource packs use high bandwidth for short periods; a high port speed makes a difference at these moments.

Monitoring traffic

To monitor your Linux server's traffic:

sudo apt install vnstat nload
vnstat -m
nload

• vnstat: Runs in the background and records daily and monthly traffic. vnstat -d shows the daily summary, and vnstat -m the monthly one.
• nload: Shows current incoming and outgoing traffic in a live graph.
• iftop: Shows which connections the traffic comes from; it's handy for finding the source of an unexpected traffic spike.

Unexpectedly high outgoing traffic can be a sign of a compromised server or an abused service; take a look at our Linux server security guide.

Bandwidth at Nodesty

• AMD Ryzen 9 9950X VPS: 20 Gbps network port in Frankfurt, 10 Gbps in New York.
• AMD EPYC 7763 VPS: 10 Gbps network port.
• Dedicated servers: 1 or 10 Gbps network port.
• Web hosting: Unlimited traffic.

Bandwidth use on virtual servers is subject to our Fair Use Policy: the policy allows usage of up to 1 Gbit/s in line with the nature of the plan and recommends monthly consumption of 50–60 TB within fair use limits. If network resources are consumed excessively in a way that affects other users, bandwidth may be limited. The nShield DDoS protection included with virtual and dedicated servers also filters attack traffic before it reaches your server.