Bandwidth Jump - Recent Threads

[Ron Earp]

I got the bill from Liquidweb this month and the bill was suprising. Seems we exceeded our server bandwidth usage by 60gig getting us a nice fat $90 fee. Ouch!

I need to check previous months closely, but I don't remember anything this high. I'll also look at the next tier of service for bandwidth and adjust accordingly.

Point is - looks like recent developments have caused a lot of reading on the site, which I suppose is good. Lots of pictures have also increased bandwith as well since www.gt40s.com is serving these and they are not linked in. I am starting to feel that pictures might should be a "member" type thing since they cost a fair amount of bandwidth. Sure, pictures are for the benefit of the reader, but there is really no other way to do it and besides, everyone likes to show off their cars and builds!

Anyhow, I'll check options including other hosts. I don't want to be paying $170 a month for a server to host the site, that just seems too high to me.

-------------------------------------
Liquid Web Inc. Billing Invoice
-------------------------------------


Account Number: 52336
Name : Ronald L Earp
Domain(s) : gt40sforum.com::PRK host.gt40s.com::VDS gt40forum.com::PRK
Payment Cycle : monthly
Payment Method: credit_card
Date : 04/04/06


Charge for 1 PRK Account(s): 0.00
Charge for 1 VDS Account(s): 80.00
Other charges per month: 0.00
Total charges per month: 80.00
* 1.0 month(s)
---------------------------------------------
Subtotal: 80.00
One Time Fees: 90.00
---------------------------------------------
Total: 170.00

[Mark Charlton]

Just a little icing on the cake, eh Ron?

I personally don't understand how some members can talk about how people should be willing to pay premium sums for a car, and yet don't feel the cost of a tank of fuel (a year...) is a worthwhile contribution for the entertainment, comradreship and knowledge value to be had here on this forum. Just my [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twocents.gif[/img] ... let the [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/flamer.gif[/img] begin...

Support www.gt40s.com

[Ron Earp]

I'm not worried about the members, we get enough funds per month if we're at the $100 level or so. But over the last few months it has been $120, $140, $170 as bandwidth has increased.

There are a lot of "cheap" deals out there with more bandwidth, but the problem is the up time and server. Here at liquid web we share a server with only 4 other sites, and it means it is fast and has little downtime. I also like Luiqdweb for support - have an issue and someone is on it in minutes even on weekends. But, I need to check around and compare other options.

Ron

[Pantera1889]

I would rather make a contribution than have a slow server or risk down time.

[Ron Earp]

I've got them working on a solution. I could do a dedicated server at $150 a month, but that is probably overkill. What I need is them to upgrade the quota on this virtual private server and they are looking into doing that.

Ron

[BenL]

Did the maximum size for uploaded photos change recently? Could that be part of the increase in bandwidth?

[Ron Earp]

No, but there are a lot more people uploading photos these days, that is certain. And, a lot more people on line, have a look at this stat:

"Max users online was 799 @ Sun Feb 26 2006 10:28 PM"

That is indivdual IP addresses in a 30 minute period. Not bad for a single car forum!

Ron

[Ron Earp]

That is supposed to be meg on the first post, not gig, sorry about that.

[Alex Hirsbrunner]

Hi Ron,

If you are getting charged $90 for 60 Meg over you may want to look at cachefly.com. They are industrial strength and have excellent multi-point distribution technology. I think you will get better performance for way less $.

http://www.cachefly.com/plans.html

Best Regards,

Al (I have no affiliation with or investment position in CacheFly)

[Ron Earp]

Is that a shared server? Right now I'm in a good place with Liquid Web - it is a shared box with three other sites but those sites "died" and are not replaced. We're on old hardware there but stable and essentially ours. If Liquidweb moved me to a modern plan we'd go to a virtual server where we would share with other sites, but, the tech there said we'd probably lose performance. So, I had them increase bandwidth for an extra $20 and we stay there for around $100 a month with 350 meg transfer.

[Alex Hirsbrunner]

Cachefly places your content on (modern) multiple server/blade farms at multiple points of presence across the globe (at least 10 I believe). They use proprietary technology to ensure you are routed to the server closest to you. Today, whether or not you have your own server doesn't really matter as what you are really paying for is an SLA (service level agreement). A supplier (like cachefly) will host your site on one or more blades as required to meet the SLA performance (latency) requirements.

For those of you that are in the computing/communication technology fields you should note that digg.com (and revision3.com) is hosted by cachefly. This site now has more traffic than slashdot which is quite a statement.

Perhaps something to consider when you switch over to the new forum software. I suspect you will see better performance (especially for the users in europe) for $15/month @ 30 Gig/month

Heck since it's free for a month (currently listed as until April 11th, but there are other "codes" you can enter get this deal after then - I'll dig them up tomorrow when I'm in the office), all you need to do is go to GoDaddy.com, get another similar domain name for $6.95 like GT41s.com :-) for testing and see how cachefly compares to liquidweb - just don't allow new posts on test site so we don't have to check two sites!

Here's a general graphical comparison of old vs. new (cachefly):

[Alex Hirsbrunner]

Go to http://www.cachefly.com/diggnation, or use coupon code "diggnation" when you sign-up, you'll get the first month to check it out free.

Regards,

Al

[Rob]

Ron,
Question / suggestion:
Is it possible for post threads to load in reverse order (i.e. the most current post first) as apposed to how they are now. My thought is this would SIGNIFICANTLY reduce bandwidth and data transfer, as we would not be loading and reloading pages we have seen multiple times just to get to the most recent post.

We would be able to review threads quicker, as most recent post would be the dead center on our screen when the thread loaded, and we wouldn't have to load mulitple pages therefore saving bandwidth.

Just food for thought....[img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twocents.gif[/img]

[Mark Charlton]

That is a very good idea. I have the same frustration, but never thought hard enough about it. I bet it would save quite a bit of bandwidth. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beerchug.gif[/img]

[Malcolm]

Doesn't "Active Topics" do this?

[Rob]

Hey Malcolm,
What I am referring to is when you choose a thread in active topics, and open it, it loads in chronological order (i.e. the first post in that thread is first in line), my suggestion is that the first post be last in the thread, so as not to load and reload over and over all the photos that we have seen multiple times before. Hence, the most recent post will be the first one you see.

I don't know what the structure is that Ron has to work with, but think this would dramatically reduce bandwidth used.

[Paul Thompson 'Hooligan']

Hi Rob

I thought that too but I'm not sure it would make any difference..

The reason being I think that each thread may have several pages depending on the number of posts/replies, these pages are numbered 1 2 3 etc.

When you click on a page number to select it, it opens to reveal ALL the pictures to the bottom of that page, so assuming there were 5 pages and you click on page 5, you'd still download/access all the posts on the page of that thread whether the newest is at the top or bottom.

I also thought it might be better to have the newest at the top anyway for the 'latest' input to a thread, but that in turn might mean you are distracted from the real sequence of events being detailed as you would for example see the finished result of a build before the arrival of the parts.

Of course I could just be talking a load of old tosh anyway! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[Rob]

Paul,
Agreed with one acception, you will automatically load page 5 first and be looking at the most recent post, so there would be no need to load a second page (assuming of course you are current with the topic). If not, then you would have to load all the pages anyway, and in that instance you would be back to the current situation.

Anyway, this is all butcus unless Ron sees value in it, and the structure permits it. So at this point I feel we are[img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/dead_horse.gif[/img] until he chimes in.

Cheers... [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beerchug.gif[/img]

[Ron Earp]

Well, the funny thing is, my computer works like that now - sometimes. Like on this thread, I opened it, and