Quick Question for Those Who Understand Bandwidth

B-Bear · #1 Postby **B-Bear** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 1:49 pm

I have a quick question:

When a picture is hotlinked from another server and posted on the forum here, how does that affect the bandwidth of the Storm2K server?

Does it?

ColinD · #2 Postby **ColinD** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 1:52 pm

It doesn't.

#3 Postby **ericinmia** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:00 pm

has no effect.... when your broswer at your house assembles the code from the s2k server... it sees the hotlink for the picuter and goes to the respective site to retreave the image.
-Eric

B-Bear · #4 Postby **B-Bear** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:02 pm

So the initialization request from the chat server to the hotlink doesn't consume any additional server memory whatsoever?

opera ghost · #5 Postby **opera ghost** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:03 pm

Nope.

B-Bear · #6 Postby **B-Bear** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:06 pm

Hmm. Curious.

So I'm then wondering why this becomes such a huge issue at bulletin boards. I know that it creates a problem for people on dial-up service, but on other boards I've visited I've heard admin say that picture posting was limited to certain size/frequency restrictions due to server bandwidth issues. Just blowing smoke then, eh?

B-Bear · #7 Postby **B-Bear** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:07 pm

By the way, thank you all for your responses.

#8 Postby **simplykristi** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:10 pm

It may not be limiting to s2k but it is limiting to where the pics are being posted from. That is called bandwith stealing.

Kristi

B-Bear · #9 Postby **B-Bear** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:12 pm

Yes, I was aware of the bandwidth theft issue. And it wasn't related to Storm2K. It's related to another web site I visit. I was under the same impression as has been posted here--that the bandwidth comes from the site hotlinked to. But that's not what was stated at this other site. It's a rather contentious issue over there...thus my posting of my question here for clarification.

#10 Postby **ericinmia** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:13 pm

B-Bear wrote:Hmm. Curious.

So I'm then wondering why this becomes such a huge issue at bulletin boards. I know that it creates a problem for people on dial-up service, but on other boards I've visited I've heard admin say that picture posting was limited to certain size/frequency restrictions due to server bandwidth issues. Just blowing smoke then, eh?

Some boards allow you to actuall upload the picture to the board... so it is then on the server that the board is on... no linked to elsewhere. This would cause bandwidth problems eventaully if there are many large pictures. S2k is not like this however so we should be fine.

-Eric

#11 Postby **simplykristi** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:15 pm

It is not right to hotlink a pic from one server to another. It is a pet peeve of mine.

Kristi

opera ghost · #12 Postby **opera ghost** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:18 pm

Well first- a lot of people don't understand bandwidth... and

In times like this on a hurricane board

1. You can crash other people's servers with high bandwidth calls on thier images (IE My avatar here is on a personal server... if there are 2000 calls on my avatar image from S2K because I have been posting a lot- it might up my bandwidth significantly.)

2. If you're already having difficulty loading the site because of high demand on the servers- trying to load images can sometimes create a call time error with people who have standard settings. Depending on how the page in question is designed- it may demand the images before it will finish loading the page... and if the images are slow and the server is taking a beating- it can add up to a lot of 404 errors as the users computer says it's taking too long to load- which can lead to people hitting refresh over and over and over trying to load the page- which ups the server demand with no output.

3. On S2K and a LOT of other message boards there are some local server avatars and images. It may be impossible to seperate the avatars being loaded from the home server and those (like mine) being loaded from another server- so, in the interests of lowering bandwidth, they will take all avatars offline- and may even take image loading offline. Because some portion of that may be linked back to the home server- it's more load on the server.

It's also incredibly rough on dial up. They're going to be struggling to load the base page- then struggling to load each individual image each time the thread is opened... even if they don't need to see the image and instead want to participate in a discussion about the image.

It's generally easier- when there's a huge damand of bandwidth- to disable images than to try to explain to people to be gentle with the server and to be kind to the dial up users.

#13 Postby **ericinmia** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:20 pm

simplykristi wrote:It is not right to hotlink a pic from one server to another. It is a pet peeve of mine.

Kristi

Govt/ websites are setup for that...

if it is trully a problem... almost all websites have the abiliity to disable hot-linking from other sites. Almost all don't, part of hosting content is the dissemination of that content. If you want to recieve the credit for material on your server, mark it all!
-Eric

opera ghost · #14 Postby **opera ghost** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:27 pm

You can disable hotlinking at the home server if it's a problem, however, this is generally more complicated than most people/sites are willing to go. Geocities and angelfire and several other sites of that sort already do it.

Most message boards can also disable hotlinking from other servers....

HOWEVER there are people, like me, who pay good money to buy thier own server space to host images and pages. I have my own domain, my own section of server, my own bandwidth. Disabling hotlinking on a site generally ticks me off- I like my ability to host images and be origional- I go to other places when hotlinking is disabled.

That said- if you don't have permission... tha'ts lowest sort of internet scum behavior. I pay for my bandwidth and server space and domain... it's stealing to swipe my stuff.

Quick Question for Those Who Understand Bandwidth

Quick Question for Those Who Understand Bandwidth

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