Question for people who host on their own servers..

[Gears]

How much bandwidth would you say that you use per month? In relation to how many series/OVAs you offer for download, I mean.

Say I offered 5 episodes of an anime. How much bandwidth d'you think I'd use? x:

Thanks!

[Fuji]

It depends on how new your anime is, where you post these links, and how many other available sources there are.

I host artbooks and BL games, about 25 gigs of it in total, posted to aarinfantasy forum. It takes up about 100 gigs a month. You can find the thread in my siggy, if you want to see the list of what I host. These files are not as popular as anime episodes, especially yaoi anime episodes.

If the episode is a brand new release and you are the only host, then you could have 100+ downloads per day for the first week, and then slows down after that. One episode = ~300mb? Then it would be 300mb x 100 dls x 7 days = ~210 gigs in the first week. If there are 3 hosts with the same file, then maybe only 70 gigs. If there are 10 hosts, maybe 20 gigs. If this is a common and older release, you may only use up 10 gigs a month per episode.

Furthermore, if you post the link to a public website and anyone on the internet can download, you may get something like 1000 downloads or 10,000 downloads a day. In a forum, the numbers are usually much less. If you have a script or password to stop bots and hotlinkers, that helps too. When I first started hosting, a 600 mb file of mine was hotlinked for 270 gigs within a few days before I realized it was hotlinked and put a stop to it. Bots will also download anything they get their hands on, and if you don't do something to prevent spambots from sapping your links of hundreds of gigs a day, you'll be losing bandwidth without even having real people download your files. Finally, do you allow download accelators/managers? Some of them hammer your server and download 3-10 times the amount of the file just for 1 file (this makes the download faster). That means each 300 mb download could eat up a few gigs per download even though it's only 300mb file size. You can block download accelerators with .htaccess or you can make rules on how to download, etc.

I suggest putting a bandwidth throttle on your server for a fraction of your paid bandwidth. When that's used up, your links go offline, but you are not hit with a ton of over-bandwidth fees (which can be really expensive) . Try hosting a little to start with, see how the first month goes, and gauge your way from there. ^^

[Gears]

Thank you Fuji, that is very helpful. ^^

[SpiritOfTheWinds]

I have a question... maybe stupid but...

How can I know my bandwith? If I wan't to host files, I should know how much I can offer, no? Just so you know, I have illimited download and upload, but my Internet provider don't tell anything about the bandwith...

[Fuji]

I have a question... maybe stupid but...

How can I know my bandwith? If I wan't to host files, I should know how much I can offer, no? Just so you know, I have illimited download and upload, but my Internet provider don't tell anything about the bandwith...

You bandwidth is the limit for your upload/download. If your provider says it is unlimited upload/download, then it is technically "unlimited" bandwidth, which means that if you use up a LOT of bandwidth in a month (I'm guessing over 1 TB or something), they may shut you down but they cannot charge you additional fees.