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why limit webpage use?

extant
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎09-01-2008

why limit webpage use?

Plusnet allows 15Gbytes per month (depending on package).
Upload+download traffic is limited to something like 250MBytes per month. What is the financial imperative for this?
It was recently argued that plusnet may as well provide email servers (which I do not see the point of using) because it is so cheap. Why should webpage usage not be increased using the same argument?
I have a vested interest, as I have been referred to the abuse team. I am now being asked to grovel in order to share a few photos with my family.

24 REPLIES 24
extant
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎09-01-2008

Re: why limit webpage use?

I see that some plusnet staff have posted to more recent topics than this one.
So no one is prepared to defend this limit.
so 15000MB is allowed from the general interent. 250MB to/from plusnet hosted webspace. the extra cost of a bit of hard disk space and server activity does not seem to justify it to me.
Perhaps I would be more repentant if there was a reason for it. Anyone care to explain?
James
Grafter
Posts: 21,036
Thanks: 5
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: why limit webpage use?

Hi Extant,
I think you might be misunderstanding how we manage bandwidth for different things.
We pay BT large amounts of money (read as millions) to supply central bandwidth for your connections to upload and download data using your internet connection.
The amount of webspace that you receive is completely unrelated to that.  We have to supply additional storage in addition to the amount of bandwidth we supply you for your connection.  If you need additional storage for your website, then I would strongly suggest looking at a dedicated hosting option from a different supplier.  Our hosting is provided free of charge and a value added service to your broadband account.
extant
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎09-01-2008

Re: why limit webpage use?

Indeed. so I am asking how much it would cost to provide a slightly better service.
For example, I believe your email servers are a waste of time, because gmail is so good. However, the cost is of the order of 10p per user per month, so why not?
I am interested what the drain on plusnet resources would be to allow say 1GB upload+download per day. or even a more sensible limit of say 5 to 10 GB per month.
I do not think paying for hosting is necessary in my case. upload+download is 0 bytes most days. Perhaps once a month I will share a zip of jpegs with my family. say 70MB at the largest. This gets downloaded a few times in 24hr and I breach 250MB.
James
Grafter
Posts: 21,036
Thanks: 5
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: why limit webpage use?

We're just not in a position to offer that amount of storage on our current platform.  However, I know that Ian is looking at potential option for a new hosting platform which I'm sure he'll provide an update on when he has some further news.
gofaster
Rising Star
Posts: 369
Thanks: 16
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: why limit webpage use?

Jameseh, are you misunderstanding the question here?
Extant is asking for more bandwidth for his website and you are saying he can't have more storage. The two are completely different matters aren't they?
Do you pay BT millions for third parties to access our webspace? Surely this access doesn't go through Centrals?
James
Grafter
Posts: 21,036
Thanks: 5
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: why limit webpage use?

Ah, my apologies, I was indeed confusing bandwidth with storage.
I really don't have a good enough understanding of the platform in order to say why we don't merely increase the amount of available bandwidth, although I suspect that it's load related on our current platform.
I'll see if I can find Ian though.
Not applicable

Re: why limit webpage use?

Presumably one of the problems is that webspace bandwidth does not just apply to PN customers, it can be consumed by anybody on the internet.
If ones webspace were only viewable by people on PN connections, the case would be an easy one to make - the only people that could use bandwidth downloading from said webspace would be people who were paying PN for that bandwidth.
When it comes to hosting, PN still have to pay for the bandwidth connecting the hosting site to the internet, but in this case customers from any ISP can consume that bandwidth.
To take the example of 1GB upload/download per day per webspace, this could therefore equate to 30GB of bandwidth that PN have to pay for.
So, purely from this angle we can see that it would be difficult to make it even a break-even offering.
We should also consider the extra hardware demands which could be created - can the current hosting infrastructure cope?
Its probably fine whilst most of us use it very little if at all - either because the storage is too small, or the limits too low. If they were increased substantially, it would be more attractive to many of us to use, and therefore increase the number of customers actually using the platform.
Just some ponderings as I see the situation.
geewizz
Grafter
Posts: 1,125
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: why limit webpage use?

Approaching the OP's personal circumstances from a different angle, perhaps he is better off looking at alternative methods of sharing photographs on the internet? There is an abundance of free and secure filesharing facilities available these days and it's possible to display your pictures on a site hosted by plusnet without having to use the webspace for anything other than some additional text and background graphics. It's simply a case of adding in external links instead of internal ones when composing your pages.
I agree with James_H about the risk of oversubscription if the limits were raised substantially. I don't use the webspace provided because there isn't enough traffic allowance for my site. I have my site hosted elsewhere and i pay for that. Obviously, if the traffic limit was raised then I would stop paying for the web hosting and transfer my site to the free solution on plusnet, as I'm sure many other people would do. Plusnet would then be running at a loss and would have to remove the freebie from the package or increase the prices to cover it. That's not how the packages were designed though and that's why the limits are unlikely to be raised. Plusnet have to make a profit or the business disappears.
extant
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎09-01-2008

Re: why limit webpage use?

@James_H
how about having a monthly download limit, rather than a daily one? Monthly downloads from my webspace are unlikely to exceed say 1GB. daily ones do exceed 250MB.
@geewizz
I do not "compose pages". I bung a zip full of jpegs and email the URL. It is quicker. Most sites for sharing photos are irritating and slow. The way I do it, I only have to upload a single file. Also, most of those sites cripple the quality to save their own hard drives. Also, when my family look at the photos they would have to click ... wait ..click. the way i do it they only have to download a single file (while they make the tea) and can then look at them at whatever rate they like.
It had occurred to me that bittorrent might be a good way to go, however I would have to introduce them all to new software, which is hard work (particularly for my older relatives).
zubel
Community Veteran
Posts: 3,793
Thanks: 4
Registered: ‎08-06-2007

Re: why limit webpage use?

Perhaps a site like Rapidshare would suit your purposes more - it's designed to lob a file up, have it download a few times, then expire naturally.
B.
geewizz
Grafter
Posts: 1,125
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: why limit webpage use?

Quote from: extant
Perhaps once a month I will share a zip of jpegs with my family. say 70MB at the largest. This gets downloaded a few times in 24hr and I breach 250MB.

I looked up the allowances on the BBYW packages and it looks like this :
Quote
Webspace
Build your own website with 250MB of webspace
Web Traffic
250MB daily website traffic allowance

It looks to me like you are using the webspace for something that is more easily dealt with by email. You state that you are uploading zip files to the webspace which implies that you aren't displaying them in a web page anyway.
You could try compressing the photos. Another option is to upload the images individually and in two formats, thumbnail and large. The viewer would then have the option of choosing to open only the images that interest them enough to download the larger file. Thumbnails can be in the order of 2 or 3kB.
I think the most eloquent solution is for you to resize the photos and use a reasonable compression to allow you to upload images of around 2Mb to your webspace. Mail your family with even smaller images and provide links to the larger files on your webspace, giving them the option to download their choice of images. I would imagine that you will cut the traffic to a level that will halt any further problems of reaching the limit within 24 hours.
geewizz
Grafter
Posts: 1,125
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: why limit webpage use?

Quote from: extant
@geewizz
Also, when my family look at the photos they would have to click ... wait ..click. the way i do it they only have to download a single file (while they make the tea) and can then look at them at whatever rate they like.

Like email?
extant
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎09-01-2008

Re: why limit webpage use?

they are jpegs, so they are compressed. if i used high ISO (so there is chrominance noise) then i use more compression.
The whole thumbnails/full versions thing is neat, I have considered it, but takes ages.
email is, on the whole, poor with 70MB attachments.
Barry - Rapidshare looks interesting. I will give it a try. Many thanks for the tip.
pierre_pierre
Grafter
Posts: 19,757
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: why limit webpage use?

Quote
Perhaps once a month I will share a zip of jpegs with my family. say 70MB at the largest. This gets downloaded a few times in 24hr and I breach 250MB.

If you set up a free Flickr account http://flickr.com you can upload up to 100 mb a month free, and your relatives can look at you pics to their heart content, it wont come of you allowance.  you can put each upload into a named set and set the access to private, then just tell your relatives the address of the set.
this is one of mine  (I have a paid for account as I upload more i.e. the vidoes)
http://flickr.com/photos/25737856@N04/2610261004