bandwidth exceeded?

[rbpops]

a couple of times when i click on philmug..... i get a page that says bandwidth exceeded...... what does this mean exactly and why does this happen. eventually, after a few hours, im able to log on again. this has happened a number of times and am just curious as to why it does.

[El CaMOTe]

ME 2 !! does it mean something like you were late in your Meralco payments ??

[Edited on 28-8-04 by El CaMOTe]

[hannibal]

same here... happened to me more than just once.

[Adel]

It's a complicated issue. We're still finding our level of usage, which is strangely elusive. Funny how our sister site, Mapalad, is almost exactly the same setup, albeit with a way bigger membership, but it never has these glitches. The only answer, according to our web gurus, is that we have way more members on broadband connections, thus using up exponentially much more bandwidth than a larger group using, say, mostly dial-up connections.

I'm sure our illustrious admins, who are working on the solution, will be able to explain it better and in more detail than I could. Expect them to chime in shortly.

[elbert]

It simply means that the load of PhilMUG exceeds the bandwidth allocated by the server. Bandwidth allocation is just like a speed limit. We exceed that and the server automatically suspends the site. Our Admins have coordinated with the host to address this issue. They have responded by increasing the bandwidth allocation.

While most sites can survive on 2GB limit, itthat number is far too small for us. Today, we surpassed 15GB. Our host has bumped us up to 18GB to alleviate the situation. At the rate we are going, looks like 20GB would be ideal.

[elbertlo]

Hello everyone!

I've been the one asked to host philmug.org by the sponsors. I'm not sure if I can name them but I'm sure Adel will be able to mention them as needed. :lol:

Sorry I've been out of the Mac seen for a while as I'm busy running another or so communities.

Anyway, here's my first hand take on the situation: When I was first approached, I was asked to allocate 5GB transfer for philmug. It didn't take long for nino to request for additional bandwidth. And then again...

Since the original agreement was for 5GB, philmug has to work with the sponsors on either increasing the bandwidth permanently, or reducing consumption. I'm merely following their instructions and accomodating philmug on additional free bandwidth when available.

So why is there too much bandwidth consumption in the first place? Broadband actually doens't have anything to do with it. But server performance will be affected by broadband users. It is graphics that eats up bandwidth quickly. If you have too much graphics/photos being hosted, that may be the cause. I'll try to investigate the log files and let you guys know.

That's all for now.


-elbert

[elbertlo]

Found it!

Seems that attachments are getting out of hand with some files as large as 200kb. I suggest disabling this feature to save on bandwidth.


-elbert

[Kelvin]

May I suggest not making PhilMUG your default homepage so that it doesn't have to load every time you open a new browser window? Also, hosting images instead of attaching them in PhilMUG will also help reduce server bandwidth consumption.

Any other ideas will be highly appreciated

[elbert]

thanks Elbert. We'll be requesting our members to follow some guidelines and probably impose some limits to minimize the bandwidth use.

[Maverick]

Here are some suggestions that would decrease bandwidth consumption.

1) Is the web server using mod_gzip?

What is GZIP? The GZIP zips up the content of your website and sent to you visitor. Your visitor browser then unzips and see the content. This process is transparent to your visitors. For an example, my index.html is 100KB in size. But after GZIP, it is only 30KB.

Not all webhosts have this function turned on (they won't tell you about it of course because they make money out of not using it), thus checking this feature and making sure it is on would decrease bandwidth consumption.

2) Set an max size for avatars. I've noticed some avatars that have just the right width but lengthwise, they are longer than most. Also nothing animated (GIF). Optimizing current images too helps greatly.

Or, our avatars could all be hosted somewhere else instead of on the server (i.e. .MAC accounts, own websites, Friendster, etc...)

3) Optimize HTML and CSS with validators if not already done so.

4) Not allow linking of images to other sites (i.e. if you use another forum that does not allow saving it on their servers, thus you link your image that is here on the Philmug server to theirs. Doing such would use this servers bandwidth when people view your avatar on their site).

5) Maybe close down the gallery or delete images after a certain specified time frame.

6) Not use smileys (but i'd sure miss using them... :lol: )


these are some of the things that I could think of to minimize bandwidth consumption. If I think of something else, I'll let you guys know. I hope this helps.