The www.asstr-mirror.org change is an experiment to help address the problem with the amount of bandwidth taken up by images. We've noticed it is causing some problems and are looking into how to best address those problems.

Before going into the details, to clarify the issue for those unfamiliar, bandwidth is a way to measure how much data a web site is capable of pumping out onto the Internet and is measured in bits per second. ASSTR currently pays for 10 Megabits per second (10,000,000 bits per second) at a cost of $900/mo. Additional bandwidth can be purchased at a cost of $100/mo.

While our ISP allows us to exceed this limit, if we exceed 10 Mbps for over 5% of the month (30 days x 24 hrs/day * 0.05 = 36 hrs/month), we pay *significant* excess usage charges. For this reason, we limit our outgoing bandwidth at our firewall to 10 Mbps to prevent us from exceeding 10 Mbps. The result of this self-limit is that at peak times of the day, the site can slow down if there is more demand than capacity.

Deciding how much bandwidth to buy is an ongoing process. If we only use an excess of 10 Mbps for a few hours a week, does it make sense to buy extra bandwidth that is only used for a small fraction of the time? Could funding better be used elsewhere? ($200/mo for extra bandwidth x 12 months = $2400, which could be used to upgrade or purchase additional hardware) We constantly evaluate our options to decide what is in the best interest of the site given the funding we have to allocate.

In regard to www.asstr-mirror.org, we've configured our web server to redirect all requests for images to a "virtual" server: www.asstr-mirror.org At the same time, we've placed a limit on the amount of bandwidth www.asstr-mirror.org can consume out of the total 10 Mbps we have. This allows the HTML and text files to download quickly (assuming we're not exceeding the 10 Mbps limit) while restricting the impact of images on our total bandwidth consumption. The drawback of this solution is that if image demand exceeds the limit we've put in place, images will download slowly (and in some cases time out). The reason we didn't send out an email prior to implementing the system is that we honestly didn't have a good understanding of how much the speed of downloading images would be impacted.

This solution is not ideal, as there are some legitimate uses for images on ASSTR-hosted web sites. We understand that it doesn't make sense to slow down *all* images hosted at ASSTR. We have a plan to address this issue, but we welcome other suggestions and comments.

One suggestion we are seriously considering is the implementation of a central image repository. This repository will contain images for use by all web sites hosted at ASSTR and not subject to the bandwidth restrictions of images served through www.asstr-mirror.org. An image gallery will be available to account holders to view the images in the gallery for inclusion on their web sites. If an account holder desires an image to be placed into the archive, he/she can submit it for approval. Any images over a certain size (yet to be determined) will not be accepted, particularly images with people in them (adults or otherwise, clothed or otherwise). Account holders will still be free to upload images to their web sites, but those images will be subject to the bandwidth restrictions placed on the image server.

We are open to other suggestions or comments on how to address the image issue. What we are trying to accomplish is a balance between the desire (and need) to use some legitimate images on web sites to enhance their appearance while restricting the ability for images to have a negative impact on the overall speed of the entire site. Without some kind of restrictions, a few account holders can post image-heavy sites that severely (and unfairly) impact the speed of the site for everyone.

- Rey del Sexo
ASSTR Administration

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