[OS X TeX] Web hosting etc

[Bernhard Barkow]

Hello,

On 2007-10-10, at 23:24, Alain Schremmer wrote:

>> And I don't know about the final file sizes and the expected  
>> download volume, but a data transfer limit might be something to  
>> watch out for.
>
> I don't know the sizes yet but I would guess around 100Mb for the  
> sum total of the various possible downloads but I wouldn't expect  
> anyone to download everything. However, I think that I don't  
> understand what a "data transfer limit" is. Nor, by the way, what  
> bandwith is. Can you suggest somewhere where I could get acquainted  
> with all that?

As I understand it, bandwith refers to the throughput or data rate a  
connection offers, i.e. the maximum amount of data transferred in a  
unit of time. One has to distinguish between gross and net bandwidth,  
by the way; the first ist the technical limit (e.g., 100MBit/s for a  
typical ethernet connection), the latter is the throughput of  
"useful" data, accounting for the overhead caused by the various  
protocols involved.
Quite often though the term "bandwidth" is mixed up with  
"traffic" (i.e. the amount of data transferred).
Transferring data costs money (the infrastructure provided by the  
traffic providers has to be paid for), this is why many webspace  
providers have a certain amount of traffic included in the packages  
you buy (or rent, actually) (e.g., 10GB per month); for everything  
above that limit, you are charged (e.g., 0.5€ per GB). Usually this  
doesn't really matter, but if the downloads are large and the site is  
very popular, the traffic can add up significantly (say, 1000 users  
per month downloading 50MB each…; just something to consider).

There is some information on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webhosting
And these articles seem to be not so bad as an overview (just found  
using Google, so probably not the most comprehensive works on that  
issue):
http://www.w3schools.com/hosting/host_intro.asp
http://www.tizag.com/webhost/host_types.php

Bernhard
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