# Bandwidth hog



## Barry

This forum is eating up all the spare bandwidth and has now pushed the site over the limit. Not sure what the best way is to handle this problem. I could restrict the use of image posting, require a donation from those that want to use this forum to pay for more server space, or?

Must address this issue soon. I'm glad that this has turned out to be a feature that members make use of, but it obviously is having an impact on the server and costs associated with the board.

Regards,
Barry


----------



## Walliebee

Hmmm... this is a problem. What about a time limit on each post? Maybe one week? After the week, the post/thread is deleated. 

Pictures are a excellent way to share info ...a picture is worth a thousand word....

It seems most posts get viewed the first few days, and are then pushed down lost and gone, but eating bandwidth.


----------



## JohnK and Sheri

The ability to post to this forum could be one of the features only available for paid premium members. Premium member fees should be high enough to cover extra space, and there could be a limit of pictures allowed per poster. Also, a maximum size per pic would probably help. Some of the pics are so large they hardly fit on my monitor, lol.
Maybe the pics could expire after some period of time. If someone wants to save them they can download them prior to dump, or perhaps after they expire the poster can supply a link to webshots, photobucket or such.
Sheri


----------



## Keith Benson

I think paid premium memberships would be a great idea. If you want to post pics, sign up and pay for the space. I think this might be a way to satisfy that need, and the extra IM space requests.

If you do it, sign me up.

Keith


----------



## Hobie

Walliebee said:


> What about a time limit on each post? Maybe one week? After the week, the post/thread is deleted.
> 
> Pictures are a excellent way to share info ...a picture is worth a thousand word....


I like this approach. Maybe delete the image but hang on to the post, so if someone is searching back, they can contact the poster directly?


----------



## kawayanan

Maybe I am misunderstanding something in how this is working.

As I understand it, all the pictures posted here are actually hosted somewhere else (photobucket, someones personal server, etc). Unless I am missing it, there is no way for anyone to upload pictures to the BeeSource server. I did a quick check of a number of pictures, and as far as I can see that are all using inline linking or direct linking. This means that the picture is actually loading off of another server (photobucket for example), and should not use up BeeSource's bandwidth. From the point of view of the BeeSource servers, an inline linked photo should not take up any more bandwidth than a link. Its your browser that takes the link and pulls the picture from the other server and puts it together rest of the post.

You can see if a photo is inline linked by right clicking on the photo and (in firefox at least) clicking on properties. Notice the address of the image in not the BeeSource server. This means that your browser is getting the forum page from the beesource servers, but the photo from someone elses servers (using their bandwidth). You can also see what is being loaded from where if you hit "View>Page Source" usually located in the menu bar. The page source will be much messier, but as far as I can see, the Beesource servers use much more bandwidth with all the buttons and such on each page than the photos - the inline linked photos should cost about the same bandwidth as if someone posted the url.

Am I missing something? This kind of problem is the reason that places like photobucket exist, to take the strain of hosting photos or even video off peoples servers.

Like everyone else, I would hate to see the photo gallery go. Its very nice  I just don't see how it is being the bandwidth hog.


----------



## sansabar

kawayanan 

Glad you pointed that out as I was thinking the same thing. Many user groups don't allow hosting of photos for this very reason, and if they do they limit the Mb size.
I am curious to learn how these photos hosted elsewhwere are consuming this forum's bandwidth. Perhaps the entire Beesource site is under a size constraint and has reached its bandwidth limit?


----------



## Ann

While I would happily pay (again, and yearly, as I do on other forums) for Beesource membership, I put all of my photos on my own webspace (resized, also to save bandwidth). As Kawayanan says, this shouldn't affect the bandwidth here at all - unless there's some other measurement that Barry is using.


----------



## TwT

Beesource isn't hosting these pictures so how is this using up the bandwidth, I always thought that's what the photobucket or Sony imagestation was for, I use imagestation and that's were my picture is stored, guest I could use a link but I thought it would use about the same bandwidth as a URL, maybe I am wrong but if I am please tell me what I am missing or dont understand...... but after all these years with not being able to post pictures then now we can but have to pay for it, I would rather go back to just posting links, some people cant afford to make donations but I have been a member here for a few years and really enjoy the members and site and when ever my kids get finished with college and quiet costing me a arm and leg I will gladly contribute to this forum and Beemaster forum because both have help me......


----------



## newbee 101

All my pictures are on my own domain. Maybe just new people looking, causing more website traffic at BeeSource?


----------



## nursebee

Stop letting pics get posted. Just encourage photo sharing site usage and allow links to them. Comments on such can be shared here.

Or else just join the ranks of a free photo sharing site and sell out to google, yahoo, or microsoft for billions in a few years.


----------



## bluegrass

Is it worse if we attach thumb nails instead of posting a link to the host? I think that pictures make this site...words don't decribe what a picture can.


----------



## Troy

I agree, the old adage is true. A picture is worth a thousand words. And I don't feel like typing a thousand words.


----------



## berkshire bee

*bandwidth*

I think if we use the img button at the bottom of the screen so that pictures come up with the text that info is stored on the server, but I'm not sure. If that's the casseif we eliminate that and only use links to our own sites and hosts like photobucket, maybe the problem would be solved. The way to check might be to clear all existing posts and start from scratch using only links to the pictures. It's worth a try since this is such a good forum. I'll talk to acomputer geek friend and see what he says


----------



## thesurveyor

I may have a solution. Can you PM the amount of bandwidth we are talking about. I own company that does offsite data storage for businesses. I have quite abit of bandwidth and could probably help you out. We also do webhosting, but I have made the offer before, I could absorb the cost of the hosting as my contribution to the board.

I also have some customers that colocate servers at my location. I am unsure how you have beesource set-up, but I am sure that I can probably help.

I would be more than willing to discuss this issue and see if I can be of assistance.

You can PM me or you can call 828-527-0131.

They will answer the phone as Rentavault, just ask for Doug.

Thanks


----------



## berkshire bee

*computer geek answer on bandwidth*

I talked to my computer geek friend and he said yes, the pictures that are imbedded in the posts take up an enormous amount of space. Like I thought, the thing to do is just post the text and link to the pictures stored in other places like photobucket. or your own personal website.


----------



## kawayanan

berkshire bee said:


> I talked to my computer geek friend and he said yes, the pictures that are imbedded in the posts take up an enormous amount of space. Like I thought, the thing to do is just post the text and link to the pictures stored in other places like photobucket. or your own personal website.


I consider myself a "computer geek" too.  Maybe your friend misunderstood the situation. I still don't see how inline linking could use up bandwidth here (other than bringing in more interested surfers). If BeeSource let us upload photos here and post them, then yes it would take a lot more bandwidth. Inline linking however should only a few characters more bandwidth than a url (or about the same as posting the code for a link). The place where the photos are hosted use more bandwidth, thats what places like photobucket are meant for.

I am not surprised that this forum take a good amount bandwidth though, even without hosting pictures. Right now, I assume Barry is footing the bill. I am very thankful for that, because I have found BeeSource both invaluable for info and fun. If there is a bandwidth problem, I see a few possible solutions: 

ask for donations or charge for membership
have ads (like google ads or something) to pay for the hosting
take an offer from someone like thesurveyor who may be able to provide bandwidth or hosting
For the first one, I would like donations better (if it works). Charging for membership would probably decrease the new members, since new beeks might not want to pay before knowing how useful this site is.

Personally, *tastefully* done ads don't bother me. Some people hate all ads, but simple text ads in a sidebar never bothered me. Big flashing "Punch the Monkey" banner ads do however.

Taking an offer of bandwidth or hosting would have to be Barry's call. I can understand that he might feel like he was loosing some control or ownership of the site. It might however be a workable solution. It all depends on the situation.

Maybe Barry will chime back in with a little more info on the actual situation.

Kawayanan


----------



## Ann

*Donations*

There is a Donations Button on the Beesource homepage (not the forum homepage). Perhaps Barry could put a button here, as well. I've donated, and plan to again.


----------



## tarheit

Wish I could donate the extra space and bandwidth on my account. I'm hardly touching it's limits. Have an extra 250+GB space and nearly 3TB bandwidth I'll never use. Does the BB allow storing photos on a different server? 

-Tim


----------



## xC0000005

The HTML source says :
<img src="http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x222/berkshirebee/bear damage to honey bee hive/IM000540.jpg>

And a quick check versus my bee vac pics (in another post) shows that it's definitely my server handing out the pictures. That makes me kind of curious why this forum is devouring the bandwidth. That said, if bandwidth is an issue, and you can peg it to this forum, close it rather than take the hit.


----------



## Budster

Could it be the recent software change???? You could display some Google Adsense ads and make a some money per click... Check out this link:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads/


----------



## The Honey House

The bandwidth hog might be the amount of times Beesource has to connect to these picture hosting servers, download a picture file (k bytes to over a meg sometime) and display it nicely on the beesource forum page you are viewing. Mutliple users - moving large files - looking at the same pictures all day long.


----------



## JohnK and Sheri

Please please PLEASE don't go to ads. I much apreciate the noncommercial aspects of this site and would be willing to donate more than what I already have and plan to in the future. As someone already noted, if those with slow connections don't want to see the images they can reset their preferences to not open them. The site default could be img off, those that don't wish it on won't have any problems. 
Why punish those of us who like to see the pictures? 

As for membership fees, I think the sensible proposal on the table is for an _enhanced_ membership, with picture posting (viewing?) priveledges, in addition to the regular free membership as we know it. Regular unpaid members could continue to access and post on the other forums.

Barry, I hope before going to any of the ad selling outfits you will give the membership here a chance to step forward and cover the additional storage space costs. In addition, a little education for those posting huge image files on how to resize to a friendlier format might be called for. 
If you feel paid company sponsorship is a necessity, I would hope the option of paid (noncommercial) membership is offered. 
In case ya can't tell, I HATE commercials, lol. As one who had dial up not too long ago, I remember the slow downloads those ads caused. Those who have slow dialup now can easily avoid the photo gallery or turn off their viewing capabilities but the ads would effect everyone.

Thanks as always for your continued efforts,
Sheri


----------



## Bob_Davis

thesurveyor said:


> I may have a solution. Can you PM the amount of bandwidth we are talking about. I own company that does offsite data storage for businesses. I have quite abit of bandwidth and could probably help you out. We also do webhosting, but I have made the offer before, I could absorb the cost of the hosting as my contribution to the board.
> 
> I also have some customers that colocate servers at my location. I am unsure how you have beesource set-up, but I am sure that I can probably help.
> 
> I would be more than willing to discuss this issue and see if I can be of assistance.
> 
> You can PM me or you can call 828-527-0131.
> 
> They will answer the phone as Rentavault, just ask for Doug.
> 
> Thanks


I think there is an offer on the table that would be hard to refuse. I would give it serious consideration and not go the advert route.

Bob Davis


----------



## Limey

The Honey House said:


> The bandwidth hog might be the amount of times Beesource has to connect to these picture hosting servers, download a picture file (k bytes to over a meg sometime) and display it nicely on the beesource forum page you are viewing. Mutliple users - moving large files - looking at the same pictures all day long.


Does not work that way. The client makes the connection and downloads it direct from the remote server. I think the web admin needs to go back and review what is taking up the bandwidth. We can continue to speculate until the cows come home.. from what I see, it ain't pictures that are hosted on remote servers.


----------



## Soilman

Limey said:


> Does not work that way. The client makes the connection and downloads it direct from the remote server. I think the web admin needs to go back and review what is taking up the bandwidth. We can continue to speculate until the cows come home.. from what I see, it ain't pictures that are hosted on remote servers.



I agree with this fully, there could be a code issue or something but as far as I have seen all pics have been hosted by third parties which would be no more stress on the servers bandwidth than text.


----------



## summersetretrievers

I can see where people putting photo's in their postings uses up space. There are quite a few postings with photos in them. I would either limit time up for those postings i.e., 1-2 weeks or state that everyone must use a link such as photobucket and give directions to do so at top of forum. 
Cindy


----------



## Joseph Clemens

*Excessive bandwidth usage?*

It would be nice if barry would respond again to this, his thread and provide a little more clarification. What precisely is the bandwidth usage and what feature(s) of this forum are using this excess bandwidth. I would suspect it is just the amount of persons who are posting and viewing these posts, the forum interaction (normal traffic). Since this site does not presently host images, loading images will take bandwidth on the part of those persons viewing them, and from the actual servers where they reside, but not from beesource.


----------



## Barry

I'll reply soon. Been busy and I want to talk with a host tech to get the lowdown first.

Regards,
Barry


----------



## Michael Bush

It might be helpful to put a upper limit on the size of a picture. It seems a lot of people don't know how to resize an 8 megapixel picture down to 640 by 480 or so.


----------



## Soilman

Michael Bush said:


> It might be helpful to put a upper limit on the size of a picture. It seems a lot of people don't know how to resize an 8 megapixel picture down to 640 by 480 or so.


Thats the thing, It doesnt matter what size the picture, it will not effect this webserver anymore or less than another line of text. the images are served from a third party and the connection for the transfer of the picture data is between the users computer and the third party server, not beesource.


----------



## summersetretrievers

People are putting pictures in their posts some that are very large and take up a lot of space. By restricting megapixils it would save room. Obviously links to photo sites do not contain the megapixils of the pictures they are linked to.
Cindy


----------



## Soilman

summersetretrievers said:


> People are putting pictures in their posts some that are very large and take up a lot of space. By restricting megapixils it would save room. Obviously links to photo sites do not contain the megapixils of the pictures they are linked to.
> Cindy


 wow, I cant believe that. Can anyone show me the button to upload pictures onto this site?


----------



## George Fergusson

Soilman said:


> Thats the thing, It doesnt matter what size the picture, it will not effect this webserver anymore or less than another line of text. the images are served from a third party and the connection for the transfer of the picture data is between the users computer and the third party server, not beesource.


Everyone read what Soilman and a few others have said again. To illustrate, I looked at the source of two pages, both from this forum, one with links to offsite images and one with an inline image. Here's the one with links, it uses an href tag to create a clickable link that will open in a new window and load the image into it:

<a href="http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l306/madison68/apiary.jpg" target="_blank">http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l3...n68/apiary.jpg</a>

Here's the one with the image displayed inline, using the <img src=" tag with the only difference being that the image will be retrieved by the user's browser and displayed in-line in the page:

<img src="http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z7/williamandlea/Honey%20Labels/weed.jpg" border="0" alt="" />

In both cases the image proper is stored offsite and the bandwidth utilized to download the image is between the viewer's computer and the host serving up the picture. Beesource isn't involved at all.

If Beesource stored the images locally and served them up then yes, it would impact Beesource's bandwidth utilization. As implemented, it does not. In otherwords, there's no more bandwidth-utilization issue associated with the Photo Gallery forum than there is with any other forum.

Reducing images to a size suitable for downloading over a dialup connection is a separate (though important) issue.

If the Photo Gallery forum is responsible for a disproportionately large segment of the total Beesource bandwidth utilization, it is only because it's a very popular forum and receives more hits than the other forums.


----------



## George Fergusson

summersetretrievers said:


> People are putting pictures in their posts some that are very large and take up a lot of space. By restricting megapixils it would save room. Obviously links to photo sites do not contain the megapixils of the pictures they are linked to.
> Cindy


With all due respect Cindy, you are laboring under a common misconception of how browsers compile, process, and display the pages you view. Think of it this way: When you load a URL into your browser, your computer makes a connection to the server hosting the page and retrieves the page source. Contained within that page source are instructions your browser understands that allow it to format the page for viewing. Included in that page source are the addresses (URLs) of various elements that are to be displayed in the page. These addresses can be for buttons, images, or text (content) and your browser makes a separate connection to the respective server to obtain those various elements. It's possible and even quite likely when viewing a web page that the various elements you end up looking at were obtained from a variety of different servers located wherever. When all those elements have been retrieved, your browser then compiles the page and displays it for you.


----------



## bluegrass

Thanks for clearing this up George....


----------



## Barry

Okay, I can now write with certainty and share what's happening.

George, you and others are quite right. I jumped the gun and assumed the increase was the photo forum since that is the major difference from the old board to the new one. Yes, there is healthy traffic in this forum, but, looking over the bandwidth stats of the last several months, there is a consistency month to month, day to day. The number one bandwidth hog URL for the entire beesource domain is: /forums/showthread.php
accounting for 28 percent.

It was cheapest to move up into the next larger package than to be paying for overage every month. Besides, they were willing to lower the storage space and give me a credit for it since I don't use much of the alloted amount. So, for just a few dollars more per month, we're set for now. A sign that the board is healthy and growing. That's a good thing.

The new site design and logo are coming along. It's a refreshing change. Once that part is done, I'll start working on developing the board with RSS, two tiered membership, inclusion of forum header images, etc.

I will setup an image guideline with restrictions so we don't get images that overly large to view. I thought people would do this on their own, but guess not.

Regards,
Barry


----------



## George Fergusson

Carry On Barry. Onwards! Upwards!


----------



## newbee 101

Pictures at 6:00!


----------



## honeyman46408

" I thought people would do this on their own, but guess not. "

Some of US may not bee smart enough


----------



## thesurveyor

Sounds great, if I can ever be of assistance let me know.

I am glad we now know the root of the problem, I think the posting of pics is great.

Its good that the board is growing, that is what is purpose is to share info.

Thanks for all your hard work Barry.


----------



## kawayanan

Barry said:


> ...
> I will setup an image guideline with restrictions so we don't get images that overly large to view. I thought people would do this on their own, but guess not.
> ...


It good to here that everything is worked out. 

As for the size of the images people post, what is too big? I downsize all my pictures to 800x600 (before they are 2816x2112). I use thumbnails on my blog that link to 800x600 images, so I already have my pictures uploaded to photobucket that size. Here I have posted thumbnails linking to 800x600 images and also posted the full 800x600 image. I figured that 800x600 was an ok size. Most people I know run their monitors at 1024x768 at least, so 800x600 doesn't seem to big to me. Was I wrong? Do people want them smaller than 800x600? Then again, I could just be strange...I don't remember seeing any pictures that I thought were to big. I like them big.


----------



## Barry

I think 840 x 600 should be plenty big for viewing. I'm okay with that.

- barry


----------



## Ann

I usually resize to 800x600. Everyone should be resizing their pics in consideration of our dial-up comrades . 

A free image program is Irfanview. You can easily reside images with it. Another free, opensource program I've just found (not played with yet) is Paint.net.

Microsoft offers a PowerToy for Windows XP called Image Resizer. This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. Haven't played with that one yet, either, but I'm told it's easy to use.


----------



## Michael Bush

It may just be the CCD publicity has caused a lot of traffic. I was talking to Dee Lusby about how many new members are on the organics group and that got me thinking so I checked the stats on my web site. In the last 10 days the traffic has increased by 7 times as much. I went from about 550 or so hits a day to 4000.

Maybe you just have more interest in bees.


----------



## kawayanan

Ann said:


> I usually resize to 800x600. Everyone should be resizing their pics in consideration of our dial-up comrades .
> 
> A free image program is Irfanview. You can easily reside images with it. Another free, opensource program I've just found (not played with yet) is Paint.net.
> 
> Microsoft offers a PowerToy for Windows XP called Image Resizer. This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. Haven't played with that one yet, either, but I'm told it's easy to use.


If all you want to do is resizing, photobucket.com makes it really easy. If you are hosting the photos there, they have a setting you can choose that automatically resizes your photo when you upload. I have mine set to resize everything to 800x600 automatically when I upload.

If you want to use your own software to resize, another free possibility is GIMP. Its free (open source) and does a whole lot more than resizing too. I have access to Adobe Photoshop at work but still always have GIMP around. It does some things I can't get photoshop to do nicely.


----------



## Soilman

Michael Bush said:


> I went from about 550 or so hits a day to 4000.


Sorry for that


----------

