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FAQ
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Does JB offer Unlimited
Hits or Data Transfer?
No. It would not be reasonable for us to offer
unlimited data transfer. We don't care how many
"hits" your web site or domain account gets because
"hits" are not an accurate measure of our concern.
We are only concerned about the measure of data transfer your
account uses because data transfer costs us money. Hits
don't cost us anything.
Data transfer is a commodity similar to unleaded gasoline.
Do you know of a gas station that will sell you unleaded
gasoline with unlimited refills? Sure Taco Bell(TM) can
afford to give you unlimited refills of Pepsi (TM) on the same
visit, but what is their maximum liability in doing so?
Water is a fairly inexpensive commodity, and flavored sugar
syrup is slightly more expensive. You might be able to
guzzle down a quart or a quart and a half of Pepsi if you were
really thirsty, but active web sites are a completely different
matter. An empty stomach can only be filled to it's
physical capacity, but an active web site can potentially
consume hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of data transfer
per month with virtually no physical limits.
There is a very simple formula that explains why unlimited data
transfer is an unrealistic expectation of a host provider.
Data Transfer = $
Someone has to pay for this data transfer. If not you,
then your host provider. Host providers that claim
to offer unlimited hits don't often say that this is the same as
unlimited data transfer. Those that offer unlimited data
transfer soon become overwhelmed and are unable to service
the demands of so many very active web sites. We've seen
this happen time and time again to start-up web hosting
providers that don't understand this business. Some
eventually change their data transfer policy, and some go out of
business. If you demand a reliable web hosting provider,
then paying for the data transfer your site uses is your most
practical option.
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What is data transfer?
Data transfer is a measure of the activity of a given web site in
megabytes (or sometimes gigabytes) per month. When a browsing
client (the web browser of the visiting person) views your web page
their browser first sends a request for information about your web
page. The web server software (on the dedicated machine on
which your web site is located) will then begin sending the Hypertext
Markup Language ("HTML") file requested to the browsing
client. As this HTML document is sent from the web server any
graphics necessary for that web page will also be sent. Streaming
video, Java, and many other applications may also contribute to data
transfer.
We use data transfer as a measure of your domain activity instead of
"hits" because "hits" are not an accurate measure of
our concern. A typical "hit" will transfer an average of
50,000 bytes (50 kilobytes) of data. If you ordered our Gold Plan,
which includes 1000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of data transfer, you'd have
aproximately 20,000 hits available per month.
Data transfer is as much a commodity as is any other. Someone must
pay for data transfer. Very active web sites can require a great
deal of data transfer. Some web sites, like
http://www.microsoft.com/ or http://www.cnn.com/, can require several
T1s (1.55 megabits per second costing between $3,000 and $5,000 per
month) or even T3s (45 megabits per second costing between $50,000 and
$150,000 per month) and dozens of dedicated web servers just to host a
single web site's URL. The companies that run these extremely
active web sites can sometimes pay many tens of thousands of dollars per
month for the data transfer their web site uses.
Your web site, on the other hand, will probably not require anywhere
near that amount of data transfer. On average, less than 1/2 of
one percent of the domains we host exceed their data transfer for
any given month. When one of our customers happens to exceed their
data transfer, we first notify them and see what would like to do.
We generally give them the option of upgrading to the next level
account, or we let them stay where they are if they think it was just an
unusually active month. We never invoice our customers for excess
data transfer for the first month it occurs. We always attempt to
contact you first and work out an agreeable solution for both of us. |
