Average bandwidth dealing with video

Looking mainly for some statistic type info here, no need to mention any host names

Here's what I'd like to know about you're experience(s) with serving video,

1) Content nature.
2) Served Format(s). (Flash Video, Quicktime, AVI, ect.. )
3) Average bandwidth used per day (by video; monthly estimates are fine as well).
4) Estimated percent of that which was "leeched".
4-a) Confidence level of your anti-leeching measures.

We host and publish mega adult content. The bandwidth used varies from customer/site to site/customer and increases dramatically for those streaming versus downloads. Some of our clients push more than 140GB/day. Some push less than 60GB/month. For straight downloads you can estimate your average by multiplying the amount of content by the number of monthly unique visitors. For streams you will need to triple this as people tend to watch it more than once. We're pretty adept at staying ahead of the leeches. We recommend and deploy a variety of approaches including but not limited to restricting users to one download at a time.

Thankyou Uncensored-Hosting

You're welcome. Mind telling me why you asked?

I've been given a ridiculous (as in groanable..) budget for hosting/bandwidth, I'm ultimately trying to avoid getting that "Why the hell is the bill soooo high ?!" email.

Best way to avoid that email is to choose a host that caps you at your allocation. We don't like sending those emails so we make sure the customer knows they are burning the candle at both ends so to speak. If they want more bandwidth we're happy to upgrade their plan or sell it to them on a pre-paid basis. However I do not want to send a customer an overage bill the next month and hope they stay or pay it for that matter

If I didn't already know what "Site's down!" emails look like a cap would be great.

Simple fix for this. Monitor your bandwidth usage. All hosts using cPanel have the option of alerting you when your at 80% of your bandwidth usage. Alternatively you can monitor it, or ask your host too, to ensure you never go over your bandwidth limit.
You may find yourself upgrading your hosting plan but at the same time, least your site won't display a Exceeded bandwidth utilization.

You may wanna get free hosting they offer 600MB Webspace and unlimited data transfer

http://www.Free-Webster.com

Oh my. Spamming across the forum... You know, the provisions for that host are very sinister. You must get a certian amount of traffic, they can use a portion of your site as they want (usual for free hosts, yes), but then further down...



WTF is that all about?

On Topic:

Bandwidth monitoring is rarely a problem for a host. You can throttle back your transfer speed if it starts to be an issue, which can avoid the "bandwidth exceeded" problem.