Web host recommendations...pt 2. FTP?

[Alex Rice]

On Tuesday, September 23, 2003, at 09:45  PM, Mark Swindell wrote:

> Assuming I put up a few shareware standalones to download, do I need 
> to pay for an anonymous FTP server, or will a simple web server 
> suffice?   I've built web sites before, but they've been information 
> only, not download sites.

Just offer downloads via http, unless anonymous ftp is available for 
the same price- then offer both. FTP is more efficient for large file 
downloads. But, anymore with the big fast servers one sees around- 
downloading large files via http is not a problem.

> Also, how does a download count against bandwidth?   Straight up, a 3 
> meg download is 3 megs of bandwidth?
>
Yes. Most ISPs will charge bandwidth measured in gigabytes per month. 
Suppose you are allowed 2 GB/month without incurring extra charges. 
Suppose you have a 1.5 MB file you are publishing.

2 GB = 2048 MB ; assuming 1GB = 1024MB, which it might be, or 1GB = 
1000 MB depending how they are counting.

So you could have 2048/1.5 = 1365 downloads in a month, minus other 
traffic to your site. Most ISPs will count email and ftp traffic also 
in addition to http.

What you have to watch out for is when you exceed your monthly 
bandwidth allocation. Some ISPs will basically turn off the pipe- 
disabling your site, but most should allow the additional usage, 
charged at a higher rate.

But unless you get slashdotted- you probably aren't going to be needing 
additional bandwidth.


Alex Rice <alex at mindlube.com> | Mindlube Software | http://mindlube.com

what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco