What is included in the traffic?
Last updated on March 20, 2010
Two terms often used in the video streaming business are bandwidth and traffic. Bandwidth is the maximum amount of throughput a connection can handle (e.g. 100mbit or 1gbit). Traffic on the other hand is the actual amount of data being sent (e.g. 2.31 GiB). At Bits on the Run, we use traffic to meter your usage.
What is accounted as traffic?
At Bits on the Run, we only account video downloads and streams. Traffic generated by thumbnails, embed codes, players and feeds is not accounted. We also only charge for the bytes of a video that are being downloaded or streamed. If, for example, a visitor starts an half-hour video on your website and then stops when only 20% has been loaded, only that 20% is accounted for. In sum, you only pay what you use.
Example
If you upload a video to our system, it will be converted for online playback. You can decide to embed one of these conversions, e.g. the TV H.264 one, in your website. If the conversion is 50MB large, and 10 users watch it all the way through, your traffic will be 500 MB. If the eleventh user only watches half of the video, your traffic will become 525 MB. Next, if one user decides to also download this conversion to his iPod, your total traffic will become 575 MB.
