Bandwidth Increases?

[WebmasterTed]

By any chance will the bandwidth provided with the various FQ packages be increasing in the near to intermediate future? I don't really have any sites that are pushing right to the limits of their packages now, but I'm pondering a few ideas which could up my bandwidth usage and it would be helpful to have an idea as to whether I will be working within the current limits or a larger amount.

Also, for the longer term, any guesses as to whether Moore's law (or something similar) is likely to hold in the area of bandwidth over the next 5 years or so? It would be nice if I could be reasonably hopeful that 5 years from now I'll be able to get several times the bandwidth from FQ that I currently have for about the same price I'm paying now.

I realize that FQ's ability to provide all that is based on their costs ... I don't know if the cost of bandwith at the wholesale level falling like it has in the past and likely to continue to do so or if technology bottlenecks and/or consolidation in the telecommunications industry has changed that situation :dunno:

[Terra]

Purchasing bandwidth is not like running down to the store to grab a gallon of milk... The costs are locked due to contractual commitments... So even if bandwidth does drop in price, we can be locked in at the same cost over the course of several years...

In the end, quality Tier1 providers bandwidth is expensive, no matter how you look at it...

At this point, I don't see us increasing per package bandwidth in the intermediate future as our costs and capacity are balanced...

Those that do offer larger amounts of bandwidth are usually oversubscribing their pipes 9 out of 10 times...

[WebmasterTed]

Thanks for the prompt response Terra,

At this point, I don't see us increasing per package bandwidth in the intermediate future as our costs and capacity are balanced...


I'll figure on working within the currently available allocations for the intermediate future then.

Those that do offer larger amounts of bandwidth are usually oversubscribing their pipes 9 out of 10 times...

No argument there. I definitely plan to stick with Futurequest. I'll just have to make sure I don't get too wild in my use of bandwidth :)

I'm sure looking further ahead ... 3/5/7/10 years down the road entails more guesswork. Nevertheless, your information/knowledge (and therefore your guess) in this area would certainly be better than mine. Do you think we will see substantially more bandwidth available per dollar way down the road as your long-term contracts with bandwidth providers expire? I suspect there will be plenty of more neat stuff to eat up bandwidth by then :bounce: :ytdrums: :QTwand:

[Andilinks]

I just upgraded my hosting package due to bandwidth overages and I'm thinking that with the next level of bandwidth I may host my images on a separate domain/account because Value Added Services are prohibitively expensive...

[WebmasterTed]

Andilinks wrote:
I may host my images on a separate domain/account because Value Added Services are prohibitively expensive

That sounds like a cost-effective way to deal with the situation. I use Revver (http://www.revver.com) for my videos now. In addition to keeping my bandwidth costs affordable, Revver shares the ad revenue with me. FQ for the sites, Revver for offloading the videos - it's a great combination :)

[Andilinks]

Yes, for video it would almost be essential. But I'm thinking that upgrading to the next FQ package can leave you with an inflexible situation if your traffic suddenly changes, up and downgrading packages is too cumbersome.

If you could move images (or other elements) to other accounts as the bandwidth situation changes it would be easier to get what you pay for and pay for just what you get.

Virtually everyone has some lopsided situation where there is excess unused bandwidth or disk space at the end of the month. By by carefully managing and shifting the load between two or more accounts there would be less waste and more importantly less likelihood of having to pay Value Added Services or upgrading needlessly for a single heavy month.

Since I just upgraded it may be a long time before I need to do this, but if I had thought of it earlier I could have deferred the upgrade by hosting some images on an already existing account. The bandwith overages this month were only $20, but I have had much larger bills in other months and I have been using 4 bit images to hold down costs. Spreading the images across the other accounts would have been much more efficient...

Sorry, I've been thinking out loud here. But maybe someone else could benefit from this. I'm going to get as short a domain as possible for hosting images, some of the odder two character tld's probably still have three character domains available. That would add only 12 bytes to each image.

::: wheels turning inside head :::

[Andilinks]

I should clarify that my musings above are an excellent strategy for a lean period, and like the cactus that sits outside my window I like to collect and share survival strategies.

I am not in a lean period at the moment and the cactus sits in a puddle of rain water.

But someone, somewhere is at this moment sweating over a bandwidth bill. The above post is for you my friend. And for me, should I ever need it...

[Stecyk]

I use Flickr to host my images. That helps to save on bandwidth.

Another technique is to periodically go dumpster diving through your usage logs. I use a free software application called XLogan (http://www.axeuk.com/xlogan/). Those who use it for commercial purpose are required to purchase it, I believe. With this neat application, you can easily determine which IP addresses are hitting your site excessively, which pages are being downloaded the most, and other interesting statistics. For those that are abusing your account, you can ban'em using your .htaccess file.

I am still far away from tripping over my limit. So at present I am okay.

[Andilinks]

Flickr is a good place to host images, but unfortunately that wouldn't work for me. I have over 10,000 images and update them all every eight weeks.

Your XLogan link has a stray character at the end, I've downloded it and will compare it to Mach5.

The problem I have with hit and run bots is that most hit once and never return so I've only been blocking those that return on successive days. Still the deny list grows too long from time to time. Mach5 lets me filter by 403's so I can tell which bots have come back after a week but my log files now have grown to the point where I cant do multiple days--the log files average 100 MB/day.

My pet peeve is companies like Brand Dimensions and IBM Almanden who spider the whole web just for the use of their enterprise clients. I used to let them thinking some enterprise client might notice my site but I've come to the conclusion that they are just industrial strength idiots. I block 'em.

Thanks for the XLogan. :)

[Stecyk]

Thank you for letting me know that I an additional character in the link. It should be fixed now. Good luck!