Bandwidth issues on the main site

[KyrosKrane]

You're probably aware of this already, but trying to load the main site gives an error message:

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Yes it has been exceded.

Since the day it will be down the most is sunday, I am just thinking of letting it drop for the one day, it should be back on Monday (new month). Especially because, by the time all the processing was done on the credit card, and they have time to change the switch... it would be Monday....

Yes you guys did more than 225 Gigs of data transfer in the month of Febuary, just on the main site...

[Michealus]

Thanks for the information, and to whomever suggested having the forums bookmarked as well as the main site.

I am in awe of the resource you've created guys, and the numbers of us that use it.

Thank you Niami and Nygreth, for everything you and your faithful crew do to make this site the gem it is. Thanks to the faithful crew too.

[Niami DenMother]

Thankfully, Racknine took pity on us and got us back up for the rest of the weekend.

[Ngreth Thergn]

I don't know how many people read this but...

I was wondering if folks could NOT make EQTraders their homepage.

I know many sites strive for that, but they have ADs. We have no AD's, so we have no NEED to drive trafic to our site to get AD impressions.

So basically, while we still love you and want you to visit... we don't wan't you to "visit everytiime you are passing through" I.E. evertime you open your browser.

Doing this will save us a bit of bandwidth

[Serenya]

/blush
You're not my home page exactly. errmm. somehow I can't quite ever seem to remember the path to the boards, so I always start at the homepage. /squirms. I'll attempt to retrain myself. I'll also change my netcaptor setup so it too starts at the boards instead of the main page, and just check the news occasionally. (To get my fix yesterday I had to google you till I found a link on another site /laugh).

I do love this site, and I'm quite addicted, so I hate to see it go down. I'm stunned at the collective amount of bandwith used though. /boggle

[KyrosKrane]

Ngreth, about the time the database launched, I suggested making "placeholder" recipes for common components with dozens of subcombines. This would be stuff like celestial essence, leather padding, and assorted bricks, blocks, and pieces of metals. I really don't need to know all 40-some-odd ways of making CE and leather padding when what I'm really looking up is Heraldic armor.

My suggestion would be to have a placeholder item with no subcombines. Then, you would create a new label or tag, something like "Utility item - click for recipes." In the notes field for that item, you can have the link to the actual item with the assorted subcombines.

This would shave off something like half the page size for more complicated recipes while having no real effect on the usability or readability of the site.

Another way to save bandwidth is to optimize the HTML of each page. I haven't looked at the various pages in detail, but it might be possible to shave off some unnecesary material (especially tags that have little or no effect on the actual layout of the page). A few bytes here and there may not count for much individually, but over thousands and thousands of page views, they add up.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Favorite Places add no bandwidth to us Your 2 favorites can be...

www,eqtraders.com

and

mboards.eqtraders.com

with those you can get ot our site just fine The mboards being... these boards

And KyrosKrane We may still think about it.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Originally posted by Ngreth Thergn
Favorite Places add no bandwidth to us Your 2 favorites can be...
<snip>
mboards.eqtraders.com

Is it better to do mboards.eqtraders.com or mboards.eqtraders.com/upload/index.php ? I've always had much better luck with the second (the first often timed out for me when the php boards were new, and still seems to take longer nowadays). I could just be having bad luck but it seems like it would be the microscopic bandwidth/processor advantage of one fewer hit, too.

---------
heh, the CE tree is approximately 30kbytes of data (+-500bytes, depending on how I counted), whereas some miscellaneous entire pages for some relatively small recipes are ~7kbytes.

[Tudani]

Maybe just show the standard scent of marr recipe in the tree with a "click here to see more recipes for this item" link that would take you to the CE page or load the full tree. I for one wouldn't care about the slight lack of data as it's easy to find the data if I needed it, and it will save bandwidth costs, and it will save loading time. IMO you can do this with all of the common items that have more than a few recipes, though even with just CE's at saving almost 30kbytes per load that's probably looking at a ton less bandwidth for the site.

[KyrosKrane]

Just for fun, I did a breakdown for how many bytes of data each section of the Fierce Heraldic Breastplate page takes.

Page header - 741 bytes (1.0%) - includes HTML Head tag and site banner
Menu and related text - 2,385 bytes (3.2%)
Page layout - 153 bytes (0.2%)
Unnecessary comment - 246 bytes (0.3%)
Link to expanding script - 96 bytes (0.1%)
Item name, stats, and description - 578 bytes (0.8%)
Reverse recipe link - 175 bytes (0.2%)
Recipe summary - 1,046 bytes (1.4%)
Sources - 224 bytes (0.3%)
Full recipe header - 902 bytes (1.2%)
Leather Padding - 23,714 bytes (31.5%) - includes Skinning Knife subcombines and pelt conversions, among others
royal temper - 486 bytes (0.6%)
breastplate mold - 78 bytes (0.1%)
smithy hammer - 75 bytes (0.1%)
imbued jade - 480 bytes (0.6%)
enchanted chain jointing - 7,907 bytes (10.5%) - includes some brick and block conversions.
infused high quality rings (Part 1) - 979 bytes (1.3%)
Celestial essence - 29,334 bytes (38.9%) - includes all the variations
infused high quality rings (Part 2) - 4006 bytes (5.3%)
Printer Friendly link - 136 bytes (0.2%)
Page footer - 1,588 bytes (2.1%)
Total - 75,329 bytes (99.9%) - Grand total

The counts are probably a bit understated since I was using MS Word; I'm not sure if it counts new line characters as "spaces" or not. Assume an extra 1-3% per figure if it doesn't, as a guess.

Later on, I'll put up a ZIP file of the Word document that I used -- don't want to post it here to conserve bandwidth.

Edit: the numbers don't add up to 100% due to rounding, obviously.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Originally posted by Dunthor Warsmith
Is it better to do mboards.eqtraders.com or mboards.eqtraders.com/upload/index.php ? I've always had much better luck with the second (the first often timed out for me when the php boards were new, and still seems to take longer nowadays). I could just be having bad luck but it seems like it would be the microscopic bandwidth/processor advantage of one fewer hit, too.

yes... mboards.eqtraders.com/upload/index.php is more direct, and can be used

mboards.eqtradres.com is a redirect but it is easier to remember for people that want to type it out.... so yes, for a favorite place use mboards.eqtraders.com/upload/index.php

[gnormy]

I'm just impressed that Ngreth was able to employ coding that avoided infintite looping such as with with Clay Converions.
WELL DONE!


For poeple who think they know a better a way to do it - stop and think - then stop and think again. And if you do have a worthwhile idea - share it and then let it go. Just because you dont get an answer doesnt mean you haven't been heard or that they wont use your idea. Surprisingly simple tweaks can send programs spiralling into the ground and require alot of backend testing for feasibility and reality checks.

[KyrosKrane]

Here's another possible alternative that would be more applicable generally.

Add a true/false field to the recipes table called something like "NoSubcombines". This field is false by default. When it's set to true, this indicates that you do not want the subcombines to be displayed.

Then, in the function that displays subcombines, add an IF statement near the start that checks this flag. If the flag is true, and the current item or recipe being printed is not the top-level recipe, then print the link (only) to the item, else, print the item's subcombines.

The second check (for top-level items) is to ensure that when someone clicks on a NoSubcombines item, they still see the subcombines. So, if CE is set to NoSubcombines = true and you click on Heraldic Armor (as above), you wouldn't see CE subcombines. If you click on CE directly, you'd still see all the subcombines.

Candidates for NoSubcombines = true would be:

• Items with more than 2-3 recipes to make, such as CE and leather padding.
• Any item that is vendor sold, such as bricks and blocks of ore.
• Utility items that are normally returned on success or fail, such as dairy spoons or files
• Basic items like bricks and blocks, for which conversions are an option (small brick to large brick, small pieces to small brick, etc.)

This allows the user to know there are subcombines and if he or she is interested, he can click to get the needed info. I would imagine that the vast majority of users, however, dont really need to see the brick-to-block conversion recipes or the recipe details for a skinning knife, when what they really want is the recipe for a piece of armor. Likewise, if I'm looking up Bristlebane's Party Platter, I probably don't want to know how to make a dairy spoon (not to mention the brick-to-block conversions you get as subcombines for it).

[Ngreth Thergn]

I had something like this to start with, but it worked poorly (I even managed an infinite loop in one of my itterations... mainly the ore conversions!!!)... and I came up with the ONLY ONCE method that worked more consistantly. It will still take much thought on what to do. I also expect it to be a manual choice (therefore take time of making database entry changes) not automatic.... (automatic will be harder on the back end even if posible)