Bandwidth Throttling and Small Business

[yellow1]

Anyone using products like Netequalizer or Packeteer to throttle their business' bandwidth to keep from having to buy more? According to this, it seems to be becoming more realistic -- at least in the US...

[fisicx]

The problem is not bandwidth, it is increasingly bloated websites. Back in the days of the good old 56k modem, sites were slim and efficient. But now that broadband has become widespread, sites have expanded so that page loads of 100Kb are not uncommon.

Take the humble image. It is possible to generate a 100px x 100px thumbnail that takes up less then 2kb. But most people don't, they leave it at high resolution and end up with a much larger file.

Other bloat includes:

• On page CSS and JS instead of in external files.
• The use of tables, layers, positioning and HTML styles in the document
• Document headers stuffed full of useless meta tags.
• Absolute not relative URLs.
• Images instead of text.

Make your site more efficient and you don't need to use these products.

[yellow1]

I think the problem is with other people's sites. I agree that some Web sites just require a ton of bandwidth. I go to some sites and before I know it there's video or audio streaming. But, it's necessary for some sites, just not all of them.

Another issue is VoIP.

The link I posted got removed. I'm not sure why it says it was a fake signature, though. If you want to read it, google "small business" and "throttling". It should come up. The title is "Bandwidth Throttling and Small Business."

[bubblewrap]

As a web developer I get the misconception from front-end designers (and it works) that as broadband gets more and more popular world-wide; bandwidth increasing to the mighty 24mbits/s; we shouldn't be concerned if an image button is 4kb or not..

It's still the mega question; should the site be heavy/clunky but beautiful and provide cool/nice user experience; or should it be light; tight; but visually and UI blend?

Although, facebook seems to do well on the UI layout and design. And it's light. Ultra light.

Elie aka bubblewrap

[lori99]

If you're willing to spend more money, you can go with hosts that provide unmetered bandwidth and not have to worry about overage charges. Many of them cost less than $20 a month these days.