Is webserver bandwith the entire HTTP Request/Responce?

Question

Just a quick question. I'm making a web application where C++ communicates with a php script over HTTP Requests/Response. The data being set back and forth is quite small ~36 bytes. But I plan to have many computers connected, contacting the server quite often. I did the math, and I could potentially have gigabytes of data transfer a month. This isn't too much of problem, but it would be if the bandwidth included the request/response headers the request size would be about ~560 bytes. That's about 16x more bandwidth than I was planning... That would be a lot. If if any one knew how hosts determine bandwidth and could share, that'd be great. Thanks.

Answer 1

You should probably contact your hoster on this matter, but the term "bandwidth" usually refers to TCP traffic, not HTTP. And by that definition, - yes, HTTP headers are included.

Answer 2

Assuming the web host is running Apache, You can assume the module mod_bw is being used to control the bandwidth (It's a standard). In this case requests are not part of the traffic being monitored, the only control on the requests are the amount of them, they do not count as "bandwidth" although it technically still is. The headers and frames may count though;

Although you may want to browse the documentation, doesn't seem there's much: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/sandbox/mod_bw/mod_bw.txt

Answer 3

Yes, bandwidth always includes the HTTP headers, as those are part of the response being sent. (It probably even includes the packet headers as well)