Understanding the Difference Between Bandwidth & Server Load

Whether you’re a new web site owner or a seasoned veteran, two terms you’re going to hear a lot are bandwidth and server load. Although you may think they’re very similar, they actually mean two different things. Knowing what they mean can help you run a more efficient website.

What is Bandwidth?

Bandwidth is the amount of traffic that’s allowed between your website and the rest of the internet.  The hosting company decides how much traffic to allow, based on their network connections to their internal data center and the external public internet. Bandwidth is a term that may be used in reference to the amount of traffic that can go back and forth over the internet at any given time or the amount that is provided for a certain amount of time. When you’re involved in web hosting, on any level, it’s very important to know the bandwidth in all references.

Bandwidth is used any time there’s activity on the internet. Whether you’re accessing a web page, browsing through web pages or sending and receiving emails, network bandwidth is being used. You may have notices that certain times of the day, usually the evening, your computer seems to run slower when you’re online. This is because more network bandwidth is being used.

Most hosting companies will set a monthly limit on how much bandwidth users can have so everyone gets an equal amount. In fact, many hosting companies will monitor the sites to ensure the one site will not consume all the network capacity.

What is Server Load?

The server load, although a more generic term, is used to describe how the CPU (central processing unit) of the server is being utilized. The CPU is the brains of your computer as it “tells” programs how to run, dictates how memory will be used, is responsible for files being shuffled from one spot to another and many more things.

Every time you ask your computer to do something, the CPU is hard at work. Although computers utilize memory and disk drives, the CPU is actually the central and most important part of the computer. If you have many things going at one time on your computer (as we all tend to do), your CPU is going to have a heavy load to do. In other words, you’ll have a heavy server load.

Although you may not think server load is very important, it can make a huge difference if your computer is running slow or is almost unresponsive. If you have many different things running on your server, it is going to slow things down immensely. In addition, if you share the server with other sites, you are going to be slowed down due to the heavy traffic.