Message text Sundown wrote:
> I was unaware that refreshing
> pages used up bandwidth (which
> I also don't understand
Writing only about bandwidth was inaccurate (my fault, sorry).
There are 2 different resources involved: bandwidth and server computing time.
Think about bandwidth as a water flow. When you request a page, you are turning the tap on, and water (data) start flowing. At the page end, the tap is automatically turned off. Even if you request the same page, our server has to recreate it to see if something changed (ie: someone else played), so the data flow is always new and different (even the water seems always the same, every time you turn your tap on  ).
It isn't so for images, that may be cached by your browser (but maybe not, if you are out-of-cache). Total bandwidth used depends on how many users keep their taps turned on at the same time.
Server computing time is the time spent creating pages. Every time you ask for a page whose name ends with "asp" suffix, you are executing a program being on the server.
That program execute several operations before giving you the final page. The most time consuming pages for example are the move page (expecially when it's playing the last active user and turn ends) and the login page (every time someone login, server check for users not playing for too much time and send mails to them). So, to explain better, if a lot of users try to play in the same time, the server may have problems serving all users in the right timeslot (even if bandwidth shall not be a problem).
Our server is not a dedicated one. That means there are several site on the same server. All the sites' users request bandwidth and computing time on the same time, and the provider need to balance that. If we are asking too much bandwidth, or too much computing time, for several timeslot, there are some server "demon" programs that put our site down for a while to be sure other sites on the same server can have their right timeslots too.
Maybe in the future we could change server, but this kind of problems never ends as long as users grows. For example, some years ago someone tried to use The Microsoft Network(think about a very big water pipe with a nearly unlimited computing time availability ) to net streaming a Madonna concerto, and it was a complete disaster. You can read about that experience here' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/2100-1023-249084.html?legacy=cnet">here. Well, to be honest, having the same problems Microsoft had should be a real pleasure.
Sorry for the long explanation. I hope you didn't get bored reading it.
Bye for now
Your WebMaster |
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