Smilies vs Bandwidth

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1

I keep hearing how smilies are a massive waste of bandwidth. Often, this is used as an argument for banning Sweet Sue or in ChiefScott objecting to, well, everything.

Looking at my own system, I find that such things are stored in my Temporary Internet Files directory and are, as far as I know, pulled from there when IE sees the code rather than downloaded every time they are encountered. As far as I know, IE is supposed to do this to speed things up. Looking closer, I see that FROWN.GIF is, for example, only 94 bytes. This does not seem like a burdensome size, especially for something that doesn’t need to be downloaded all the time. Hell, I can’t SNEEZE in only 94 bytes! By comparison, banner ads range around 3000 bytes and the Straight Dope logo is 6951 bytes.

So, please explain to me why smilies are considered so onerous, besides because ChiefScott finds cute stuff annoying, and, if they are so tough on system resources, why they are permitted.

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Where did you hear that they were a massive waste of bandwidth? If we allowed users to post any graphic they wanted with the [img] tag, then yes, there could be some serious bandwidth issues (we once had a thread, it’s alleged, in which folks posted images of their desktops). Smileys, however, are, as you mentioned, small. The only possible concern is that, small as they are, they are separate files which must be downloaded separately (at least initially). I’m not sure how much difference this makes.

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Also note that once you download a smilie, it will stay in your browser cache for quite some time. The next time the smilie appears, it is loaded from your browser cache, not downloaded from the SDMB.

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In this thread Alphagene, in his capacity as a monitor, said:

In this thread Coldfire said:

And Tubadiva was quoted, saying:

And there have been other times, although I’m not taking the rest of the day to search them out (you can thank me later). Is “waste of bandwidth” used by these moderators only as a synonym for “waste of space” or “waste of oxygen,” merely as a deprecating term implying that the person is so worthless that her very existence/posts wastes a comodity that, while precious, is fairly common? In other words, is it just being used as an insult, or are they trying to reduce the burden on the servers because these objects use an inordinate amount of resources?

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None of the boards gifs seem to be optimized, from the oversize banner to the tiny Profile, Register and Quote, etc.

I ran the menu page through a free test at this website:

http://www.gifwizard.com/

6

Interesting! Thanks!

7

:stuck_out_tongue:

:slight_smile:

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This strikes me as being a seriously weird comment. Why would that cause bandwidth concerns for the SD server? The images SHOULD be pulled directly from the ISP of whoever posted them, or from wherever else the user stored the images.

Unless you folks were allowing people to upload and store the images on the SD server, or were doing something really blatantly stupid like acting as the proxy server for them (requiring all traffic to go through the SD server), it’s a nonissue for your own bandwidth.

Now, for the unfortunates who actually view threads in which people go image-crazy, it becomes a major concern – on a board I used to read, people went nuts over posting pictures of their cars, and those threads were taking literally fifteen or twenty minutes to download for anyone (connecting over a modem, anyway) who hadn’t disabled image-loading.

And for one poor guy who let a lot of people use his images in their signatures, it became even worse, since his ISP demanded that he pay for the bandwidth those pictures were eating up.

But it had essentially zero effect on the server that hosts that board, since all the server was doing was sending out an IMG tag with a URL, which typically takes up maybe a hundred bytes or so.

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They’re the smilies that the SD owns, hosted, of course, on the SDMB server. That way we can only use “approved” smilies and not insert anything potentially insulting of our own.

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Therefore, I am forced to be insulting verbally.

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Um Chronos, that does not become a bandwidth issue for the SD, that’s only an issue for those that the pictures originate from.

See if I post a picture on my own web site, I post the location of that image in a message board, it directs the message board where to find the actual picture, in this case it’s on my website. It is therefore my website that takes the hit not the SDMBs.

BTW, I was one of those that posted my desktop, along with another Doper’s desktop because he didn’t have space…believe me, the larger file didn’t create a problem for the SDMB, it went against my alloted bandwidth per month everytime it was loaded not the SD. If I remember correctly, the reason that thread was a problem was the physical size along with the fact it had to run all over the internet to find the files to load.

Oh and as for the smilies. They are all (expect for one) under 400 bytes. A small “bandwidth” issue…it’s the huge sigs that suck up so much.

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Damn…I wish that all boards would ignore a formatting tag if it doesn’t see the end tag…gotta complain to board programmers everywhere.

I don’t even know where that bolding tag comes from, sheesh!

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71-Hour Achmed, you are right. The issue with the [img] tag was NOT a bandwidth problem for the SDMB server. It had to do with people stealing bandwidth by posting pictures linked from sites that they didn’t have permission to use. It bled over into copyright issues since some of the linked images were copyrighted.

The “post your desktop” wasn’t a drain on the SDMB server, but it was a horrible thread to open, because, as you said, it could take forever to load all those pictures. But they didn’t come thru the SDMB server at all, they came from everywhere. It sure used up bandwidth on the user end, though.

This sentence is about the equivalent of the amount of bandwidth that a typical smilie would use if it were loaded from the SDMB server and that is only if the smilie had never been viewed recently, otherwise it would be in the cache.

I find it a little disturbing that a poster would be accused of wasting bandwidth over something as trival as a figure using a smilie that is located on the SDMB server. Our dear ChiefScott would have to give up his flirting responses if bandwidth is such an issue. And Duck Duck Goose would definately need to be told to cut down on the size of her posts. And those guys over in GD might as well go find another place to post.

Using Omniman’s report, SDMB’s T1 line could deliver 30 copies of the Homepage in 6.5 seconds with all it’s icons without optimization, since a T1 is about 30 times faster than the 56K modem used as a reference. That’s almost 300 copies per minute. It’s pretty obvious that bandwidth isn’t where the problem lies.

Anyone taking issue with someone over a smilie is really taking issue about that person, not the amount of bandwidth that is being used. That’s just an excuse. Using bandwidth or server capacity as an excuse to ban someone like SweetSue is simply trying to use a hot topic persecute someone. SweetSue has less than 150 posts over 6 months and the total “bandwidth” usage is probably less than this thread. And if content is the issue, her 150 posts are about the same as a lurkers reading about 300 threads over 6 months. Do we want all those non-contributors to get lost, too? Come on, this isn’t a problem.

dropzone, smilies are not a big drain on resources, they don’t eat up bandwidth, they are normally in your cache anyway and not reloaded, and they aren’t bringing the server down.

This rant has been brought to you by:
Jim

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The Banner is interesting. I checked it and it comes in at 6.79 KB in a graphics programme and as 6.951KB in IE5.5 – not too horrifying in itself but given the simplicity of the graphic, I think with about 90 seconds work, the size could be reduced to 4 – 4.2KB (probably less) and without being able to discern any loss of quality.

However, it’s also in the cache on our computers and the odd thing for me is that when a page loads very slowly, usually the cached stuff is the last to load (meaning the thread or forum page renders first and the header arrives…………….e….ven….tually).

Wondering if it would make any difference if I replaced the 6.79KB graphic in my cache with something of near zero size but calling it the same name i.e.tsdbanner.gif – have to wait for next Friday pm to try it out.

Probably a pointless exercise as I doubt anyone waits for the whole page to load because once the thread or forum page is rendered, you can click the links anyway.

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In the thread in question, a number of people were actually asking her to maker her posts longer by putting spaces in the teeny-tiny run on illegible sentences she uses. DDG or wring (I believe) gave a good suggestion that she retype in regular font with normal spacing whatever she put in her “thought balloon” as a sort of footnote. It’s frustrating to try to decipher it.

Fenris

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I never suggested that the bandwith wasted was anything like “massive”, just unnecessary. And I still stand by that. IMO, “Me too” posts are iritating and superfluous enough. Making a pseudo-ASCII graphic festival out of such a post is even more egregious. Especially since the “content” provided is overshadowed by the design, seeing as how the words are subscript and [sub]allruntogetherlikethismakingitannoyingtoread[/sub]. Her disregard for moderator’s requests on top of all of this is a bit annoying as well.

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Thanks fot the clarification, 71-Hour Achmed and techchick68– I was, of course, referring to user bandwidth, not server bandwidth. Or at least, I should have been. My thought processes have been a bit fuzzy the past few days (really got to get my brain shaved soon). Back to the smilies, I think we’ve established that the bytes aren’t a problem, but do any of the tech types know just how much strain it is to retreive the file? I would imagine that there is some nonzero server overhead, independent of the size of the file being sent. Is this something significant enough for us to worry about?

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Chronos, it is obviously a nonzero overhead, however, the [img] tag tells the server exactly where the file is located. Therefore, it is a simple copy smilie.gif to the user. There isn’t any database lookup and since these files are used quite often and less than one sector in size, they would more than likely be in the server’s cache.

I think Netscape treats images as ‘check for changes once-per-session.’ So, once you’ve gotten one copy of the image, it won’t even check that the image has been changed, much less reload it, until it’s been shut down and restarted. I expect that IE works about the same way. Of course, you can force a reload.

I counted 19 different .gif files on this page not counting the 2 smilies that Gunslinger posted. Add to that an extra half dozen on the thread list page and you have more than twice as many GIF files just to read a thread than the total number of smilies. So, if looking up smilie files is a load on the server, then all the icons are at least twice as much.

I don’t think that smilies are a load on the server at all. It can probably serve up a gazillion of them while it’s working on the database activity without even having an impact.

And Fenris, I was just trying to answer dropzone’s question, not make a judgement about SweetSue’s posting style. I personally have no problem with it. I treat it like a little puzzle, if I’m in the mood to figure it out, then I will. Much like I do most of Handy’s post.

Jim

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As, to be honest, do I. And I rarely bother, but I don’t mind that. The fact that she continues to ignore the mods’ requests to stop is a colateral benefit that makes this old revolutionary’s heart leap with joy. :wink:

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Well, now we all know where Jim’s goat is tied… :smiley:

[sub]I’d been wondering…[/sub]