Posts Tagged ‘speeds’

WordPress: Network Transfer Speeds in Use

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

To determine why the bandwidth of the connection is important to a high-traffic site, let’s look at the math.

Assume your site receives 100,000 hits in a day. For the purpose of this computation, we will say that one “hit” is a single data transfer, whether that is a single file or a whole page and its supporting files. Averaged out, 100,000 hits in a day equates to 1.16 hits every second.

Also assume the average hit generates 160KB of transferred data; HTML, images, CSS, downloaded files, etc. Every second, your site is transferring 190KB of data (160KB/hit * 1.16 hits/s). The total, 190KB/s, equals about 1.5Mb/s of sustained throughput. (Note that KB = Kilobytes and Mb = Megabits. Most network speeds are rated in bits per second, whereas file sizes are measured in bytes.) Many network providers cap the transfer rate of a site to about this level; some higher, some lower. However, only if each user visits in a nice succession will this steady rate be maintained.

Usually, more than one user at a time will access your site. Sometimes during the day, nobody might access your site at all. If 10 people hit the site simultaneously per second, and that hit rate is sustained over a lengthy period — not uncommon for a high-traffic site — then you would need a 15Mb/s connection just to keep up with the simultaneous connections.

If your network adapters maximum theoretical speed is only 10Mb/s, your demand has already exceeded your capacity. WordPress had nothing to do with it.

It is not necessary to receive 100,000 hits to cause this problem. Sustaining this rate of connectivity for a mere hour generates only 36,000 hits. If visitors concentrate their access to a certain time of day (or an automated comment spam script attempts to access your system multiple concurrent times while posting comments) then you could be left with many dropped requests.

A 100Mb/s connection could handle up to 70 simultaneous connections at the same rate of download, but it is not likely that your network provider would offer the bandwidth that could fully use this speed without paying a premium. This is generally not something you can get with current shared hosting plans.

5 Stress Reducing Computer Tips

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

For most entrepreneurs computers are an intrical part of our business. An entrepreneur can not afford for their computer to be inoperable even for a minute. Implement some of these quick and affordable computer tips to keep your computer healthy and making money for your business.

1  Double Internet Speed

Comcast recently doubled cable modem download speeds. Now you can surf the Internet and download files twice as fast. However, you need to power cycle your cable modem [unplug it for 30 seconds and reboot computer] for the new configuration to be automatically downloaded to your modem.

2  Connecting to Work from Home

Having trouble with your corporate VPN connection when working from home? Oftentimes this can be fixed with a simple firmware upgrade to your network router or a slight change in settings.

3  Sudden Lost Connection

Has your Internet connection suddenly stopped working? Frequently computer users with software based firewalls suddenly find their Internet connection no longer available. Oftentimes when you download a software update, it can change your original configurations. As a quick test, disable the software firewall. If connectivity returns, it’s a misconfiguration issue.

4  Slow E mail and Internet Browsing

Has your computer been working wonderfully, but suddenly e mail or Internet browsing is painfully slow? It could be your cable connection went out. And although the connection has returned, your computer and the cable modem may be having difficulty communicating. Try power cycling your modem.

5  Eliminate Popups

Google offers a free popup blocker with its toolbar. Download the toolbar at www.toolbar.google.com. System requirements: Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later. The popup blocker requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or later.