Traffic and Bandwidth

Each plan comes with between 3GB and 160GB of transfers per month. Click here to compare plans..

Additional pre-paid traffic can be purchased to avoid overusage fees.

3GB is more than enough for most web sites. If you are planning on a high-volume site however, please consider our larger plans. We offer some of the lowest traffic rates in Australia, which coupled with our high-powered servers, put us in a position to deal with even the most demanding of sites.

What is traffic?
    Each time someone visits your site on the internet, web pages, images and other information are sent to their computer.

    Most business web sites transfer 1GB-5GB of data per month.

    A busy retail site, or a JVM hosting multiple websites (6-10) typically does around 5GB-12GB of data per month.

    Monthly Traffic is the maximum monthly amount of data transfer your site can provide, without exceeding the limitations of the plan.

    Most companies should never have to worry about traffic, as we provide a suitable amount of free transfers each month depending on your plan.

    A flexible sliding scale comes into effect after the first 1GB of excess traffic, and dedicated servers are available for up to 300GB.

What is the difference between bandwidth and traffic?
    Many companies use the term bandwidth to describe their traffic limitations.

    Bandwidth is the width of the pipe the data travels down.

    Traffic on the other hand, is the amount of data you actually send and receive.

    For example, if you have a 56kbps modem, your modem can transfer 56,000 bits (7kb) per second. The modem has a bandwidth of 56kbps.

    Your office ADSL connection may allow 256Kbps-24Mbps of bandwidth, however your monthly traffic limitation may be 6GB.

    Many hosting companies provide 1Mbps connections, or 10Mbps connections to the internet per server.

    We are connected to our upstream provider by multiple 1Gbps links, which in turn has multiple fiber connections totaling over 4Tbps of internet connectivity (4000Gbps+).

Why does traffic cost money?
    All internet users including ISP's are charged for internet traffic due to the costs of maintaining national and international communications hardware and cabling.

    Large telecommunications companies who own telecommunications networks pass the charges of maintenance on to their customers, in the same way that we do.

    This is why international phone calls cost extra, or have per-minute costs, or why your home ADSL connection has a monthly traffic limit.

    Unfortunately in Australia, traffic prices are quite high compared to other countries. However, our network speeds are typically higher too, with 1Gb links to our datacenters instead of the 1Mb or 10Mb links usually offered by overseas hosting providers (they might not mention that on their websites).

What is unlimited traffic?
    Some hosting services (especially in the US) ignore their own bandwidth limitations and install thousands of web sites on the same machines and connections. Alternatively, they may limit your server to a 1 or 2Mbps connection, where the achievable transfer is much less than the 200gb/month they are offering in their plans.

    This saturates the connections and means most of your customers wait longer than they need to.

    Slow connections can be especially noticeable at peak-times - imagine you just got Slashdotted, or have a media mention. When you most need the power and additional traffic - your site becomes unreachable. Not good for business, and not good for developers getting popular for their skills or articles. Our load-ratio policies and flexible scalability keep our customers and your customers satisfied.

    Some hosts will also cut you off if your site becomes busy, stating "over-use of CPU cycles" and force you to upgrade before you can access your site again.

    Therefore, while the plan may say "Unlimited Traffic", this is really limited by the connection speed, server speed and the provider's hidden "real limit".

How much traffic will I need?
    Let's say your site receives 1000 visitors a month, with each visitor being sent 3-4 pages of text and images (approximately 400k) and no caching is used.

      1000 visitors x 400KB = 400,000KB = 400MB / month

    In this case, your site would need traffic of at least 400-500MB per month.

    We provide a minimum of 3GB (3072MB) of transfers per month on our minimum plans, which is adequate for the following situations:

    Type of SiteAverage Download per visitorVisitors per month
    Small business site, 3-5 pages500KB6,144
    Medium-sized corporate site1024KB (1MB)3,072
    Artwork display site2,048KB (2MB)1,536
    Software download site6,344kb (6MB)512

* Note: actual visits per month will be greater than the values above due to browser-caching, which avoid subsequent reloads

What happens if I need more?
    If you go over your limit once or twice, that's fine with us. You can also ask us to limit your transfers if you prefer.

    Overflow traffic is charged at a flat rate of $0.002/mb, or you can purchase additional pre-paid Traffic Packs.

    ItemRateRate/gb
    Overflow Traffic$0.002/mb$2.00/gb
    5GB Traffic PackAUD $9/mth$1.80/gb
    10GB Traffic PackAUD $16/mth$1.60/gb
    20GB Traffic PackAUD $28/mth$1.40/gb
    50GB Traffic PackAUD $65/mth$1.30/gb
    100GB Traffic PackAUD $120/mth$1.20/gb

    Our Corporate Servers are geared towards higher-usage customers requiring 100-500 GB per month, and provide numerous other benefits. Enquiries welcome.

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