If you serve normal webpages from your server (with no video content and/or static files served from a CDN), then for 20 concurrent website visitors, you’ll not have more than 100Mbps bandwidth (for a dedicated server). These days, it is common to have servers with 1Gbps to 10Gbps network speed. Whether the bandwidth becomes the bottleneck of in-general site speed, you can guess with tools such GTMetrix, WebPageTest.org etc sites. Unless you are facing a lot of traffic with a high number of concurrent users, generally you need not bother about speed.
We have seen dedicated servers with only 90Mbps speed to perform better than virtual servers with 3-4 Gbps connection. May be because the hardware and the connection are dedicated. This a dedicated server running WordPress with near 1Gbps speed on a test (without any whole site caching service):
By making the front end lighter, it will load within 2 seconds. Probably most of you these days will spend money behind whole site caching, geo DNS etc to decrease the TTFB. Still, we tend to recommend a server with 500Mbps upload and download speed.
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Commonly, the budget is the main restrictive factor.
Test the Connection Speed of a Server
SSH into your server. Run the following commands:
1 2 3 4 | cd ~ wget -O speedtest-cli https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py chmod +x speedtest-cli ./speedtest-cli |
You’ll receive output like this one:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | ./speedtest-cli Retrieving speedtest.net configuration... Testing from Nodisto IT, LLC (23.227.167.33)... Retrieving speedtest.net server list... Selecting the best server based on ping... Hosted by Nitel (Dallas, TX) [8.01 km]: 1.6 ms Testing download speed................................................................................ Download: 3204.92 Mbit/s Testing upload speed................................................................................................ Upload: 2450.14 Mbit/s |
This is another example of the output:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | ./speedtest-cli Retrieving speedtest.net configuration... Testing from 1&1 Internet AG (74.208.101.37)... Retrieving speedtest.net server list... Selecting the best server based on ping... Hosted by Kansas Research and Education Network (Wichita, KS) [43.14 km]: 7.97 ms Testing download speed................................................................................ Download: 92.23 Mbit/s Testing upload speed................................................................................................ Upload: 91.88 Mbit/s |
Another way to test is to use iperf tool:
1 2 3 | apt-get install iperf3 #download of a 10GB file: iperf3 -c iperf3.velocityonline.net -p 5201 -ub 10G |
If SPEED is your need and your budget is limited, then the choice of dedicated server hosts is different from HARDWARE SPEC with a limited budget. Because of the restricted budget, there will be some compromises yet they will not affect when the number of visitors is low.
