How to Calculate Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data that is transferred across a network cable line. It is measured in bytes, but often the number of bytes is so large that it will be measured in kilobytes (KB), which is thousands of bytes; megabytes (MB), which is millions of bytes; or gigabytes (GB), which is billions of bytes. The final measure of the bandwidth is bytes per second. The term is used to measure the amount of data transferred (for billing, for example), or the amount that is available to be used by a computer system.
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Instructions
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Determine the size of all the files that are to be used in the transfer. For example, if you are measuring the bandwidth used by a certain web page, add up all the file sizes for all parts of the web page: the html, the images and any other files that are included with the web page. To measure this for a website, take an average of the web page file sizes. This sum is the base file size. For example, an HTML file may be 2 KB and has 15 KB of images. This base file size is 17 KB.
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Estimate the number of page views for the file. To determine the bandwidth for a single page, use one for the number of page views. Use historical data or estimated data for views in the future for this number. For example, if 3000 visitors are expected to view the web page in a month, use 3000 for this value.
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Multiply the base file size by the number of page views. Continuing the example, this would be 17 multiplied by 3000, which results in 51,000 KB, or 51 MB. The estimated bandwidth that will be used in this example is 51 MB.
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