How much bandwidth is left unused at any time to allow for sudden peaks in traffic is known as redundant bandwidth. The more redundant bandwidth a particular server has, the better it is likely to cope with sudden peaks in traffic; which can make all the difference between a pitiful and a successful site adver¬tising campaign.

If your site is consistently slow and busy (particularly at set times during the day), then it could certainly benefit from having more bandwidth. The chances are your host does not have enough redundant band¬width to deal with normal de¬mand; they may need to upgrade their bandwidth capacity or sim¬ply review their bandwidth management strategy.

Ideally any host you are considering should have connec¬tions to the backbone with at least two service providers and at least 25% redundancy in all its connections. The higher the number of connections, service providers and percentage of redundancy, the better it will cope when things get busy or are unavailable.