Hey there!
I have a question:
How do the really big sites solve their bandwidth problems?
I have a site myself and until now I never had any trouble.
Now my site is growing, I get more members in and more and mroe bandwidth is used up.
I am already paying, I can't afford too much more and except of that I'm really really content with my webspace provider.

Can you tell me anything about it?
Is it that they place ads and let people donate and then spend really much money to afford a plan wth unlimited bandwidth or are there cheap solutions and I haven't found them yet?

Thanks in advance if anyone can answer my questions here

First of all, if you are happy with your host, it is because they do not offer 'Unlimited Bandwidth' as there is no such thing.

The first part of your problem may be your site optimisation. If you have overloaded code etc and/or images that could be reduced in size, it will help.

Also, if you run a forum, you might want to stop people posting images.

ok, I get what you mean by there is no unlimited.
But this is exactly my problem. I don't want to reduce images etc.
The coding of my site is fine too.

I'll put my question this way:
How do the big sites (with big forums where thousands of users come each day) solve the bandwidth problem?
Or how much bandwidth do they need monthly (about)?

They pay out alot more, how much bandwidth depends on the site (every site is different)

ok I guess....
thanks for your help.
I just hoped there was a better solution than paying a lot and lot of money.
But still thanks, at least now I know that it is that way.

how much bandwith are you talking about, and whats a lot of money. i've noticed that what some people consider a lot is not a lot to others, and vice versa.

I agree with Monkey

What you call big bandwidth might be small to some, and vice versa.

If you tell us what bandwidth you are using just now and what you think you may need in the future, we may be able to advise if you are in need of an overhaul of host.

Originally Posted by Gaffer Sports

I agree with Monkey

What you call big bandwidth might be small to some, and vice versa.

If you tell us what bandwidth you are using just now and what you think you may need in the future, we may be able to advise if you are in need of an overhaul of host.

yeah im guessing he isn't doing near the 500+ gigs I did at the begining of the month and thats why I asked. i could be wrong tho. btw we got charged 1 dollar for each additional gig we go over. On March 10th we hit 570 gigs. So when you do upgrade be aware of the consequences of going over your bandwith if you feel that bandwith is really an issue.

How a lot of high traffic sites that don't have the money afford what they're doing is simply post ad's or get sponsored by web hosting company's. Like a web hosting company hosts the images for them or the files to reduce bandwidth. In exchange for this the web host gets an ad or something like that.

Some high traffic sites however simply have the ad revenue and donation amount to not have any sort of sponsorship. I imagine if your site is popular enough you could probably get some bandwidth or space in exchange for the web host having an ad on your site. You just need to ask around

well usually if ur reciving large amounts of bandwidth, you usually make enough to pay for it throught affiliates (with some exceptions), but there are hosts that offer dedicated host from bandwith 10mb/s to 100mb/s. Thats the closest you can get to unlimited. When you even exceed this its usually to host on your own by buying your own servers and contacting an internet providered to proved t3 internet, but only sites that are like under 1000 top sites will need this.

They usually host their websites on dedicated servers and buy lotsa bandwidth to avoid beign taken offline. For a website to use 1000GB of bandwidth a month, the website is probably able to generate enough revenue to keep itself going.