Bandwidth consumption & calculation

Each Publitio plan available comes with included storage space and monthly bandwidth (data transfer). In this article, we will explain how Publitio measures and calculates bandwidth consumption within an account.

First things, there are two types of "bandwidth" we measure against an account and are shown together under the Bandwidth used graph on Dashboard :

1. Data transfer bandwidth (counted when video or image is played/viewed)
2. Transcoding bandwidth (counted when video or image is getting converted/transcoded or transformed)

Data transfer bandwidth is straightforward and simple to understand - for example, 1MB image getting viewed 10.000 times, equals 1MB x 10.000 = 10GB of data transfer bandwidth.

Transcoding bandwidth is calculated differently (as data processing operations are very, very CPU/RAM intensive and are putting a big load on our infrastructure, so we needed a way to measure and charge this) - so for example if an uploaded video has a size of 1GB and our service creates 3 video versions of it: 360p version of 100MB in size, 480p version of 250MB in size and 720p version 500MB in size), this will be measured against your account as 100MB+250MB+500MB=850MB of data size processed or transcoding bandwidth. This 850MB of bandwidth will show under your Bandwidth Used graph even if you didn't share any of your images or videos with the world.

It is important to understand that transcoding bandwidth is calculated only once (when the video is transcoded) and that transcoding bandwidth is part of the included monthly bandwidth allocated to your account (which resets each month)

How can I see transcoding bandwidth used?

The simplest way is to go over to Dashboard and hover (or click) on the progress bar under Bandwidth Used graph as in the picture below :