Technical Trivia

[Paul]

I like seeing the page with the statistics etc. How many members, how mant total posts, time on line etc. This got me wondering about a couple of things.

How much hard drive space does the board take up on Colin's server?

What is the throughput, in and out, per day of data?

Paul

[YaBB Master (Colin)]

OK.

Talkawhile is made up of three websites. talkawhile.co.uk is the actually board, itisyou.co.uk holds the avatars and small images, zippy.me.uk holds the large files, like mp3's.

In total they use about 1.3GB of bandwidth a day (2GB yesterday) and 400MB of disk space. The board itself uses about 80% of the bandwidth.
The database has over 150,000 entries in it.

[Paul]

Thanks Colin

Is that hosted on your own server, or through an ISP?

Paul

[YaBB Master (Colin)]

It's my own server, hosted by UK2 in London.
It's on a very high bandwidth link, but does occasionally get nobbled, by something going wrong on its sub-net. (Another server hacked etc.)

I run three other servers from home, on a business quality ADSL line. These handle all the smaller web sites and the secondary DNS.
As soon as I can get SDSL, everything will run on that.

[Paul]

On the servers that you have at home, how do you apply to get an IP address for them?

(Bit of an unfair question Colin, I teach IP addressing, but I am not sure about how you are supposed to obtain your own, feel free to refuse to answer.)

Paul

[YaBB Master (Colin)]

You just apply for an ASDL line with a fixed IP, in this case 5 usable ones. (1 base address, 1 gateway, 1 broadcast & 5 others)

The problem is that most providers specifically ban you from running servers on an ASDL line, which is why I have to pay about 6 times as much as for a standard connection. It's also 5:1 contention (but I've never seen any).

What I want is 2Mb SDSL with no contention and 13 IP's, but my exchange isn't enabled yet.

[Paul]

Thanks for that Colin, it does seem to take quite a bit of effort it takes to run the site.

Paul

[SteveK]

Re allocation of IP addresses
Large blocks of IP addresses are assigned to (european) ISPs by an organisation called RIPE. The ISPs can then redistribute the IP addresses to their customers. You are required to justify technical need for the quantify of IPs requested to your ISP, who in turn may need to justify it to RIPE.  For more info IM me.

SteveK

[YaBB Master (Colin)]

There are only about 4 billion IP addresses. Somebody didn't think this one through.

It always seems that computer addressing schemes are doomed to be inadequate?

[Paul]

It's the concept of Class A, B , and C that my students find difficult to get to grips with.

Don't worry, there is a new version of IP coming out, with 16 bit rather than 8 bit numbers.

Paul

[SteveK]

It's the concept of Class A, B , and C that my students find difficult to get to grips with.

Don't worry, there is a new version of IP coming out, with 16 bit rather than 8 bit numbers.

Paul

These days Classful IP addressing for direct connection to the Internet is pretty much irrelevant, as you will only by allocated the number of public IP addresses that you can justify a technical (not administrative) need for. I still stick to classful addressing when using private IP address space within the WANs that I design, but would be laughed off the face of the planet if I were to request a Class C for a customers Internet connection.... 

There are only about 4 billion IP addresses. Somebody didn't think this one through.

It always seems that computer addressing schemes are doomed to be inadequate?

Errm... True, but somehow I don't think they quite realised the scope of what their baby would grow up to be, when they were designing it....

SteveK

[ And Congrats on the 1000 Posts, Paul ]

[ollythedolly]

i don't know if this is the right place to Post this <maby in the members feedback section??>
would it be possable to have a counter showing how many members have posted, the active members, so it shows how many members out of the 1251 have actually posted??

e.g. 100 posts by 30 members <but for the whole board or what ever??>
thanks
Olly

[Andy]

Colin
every time I enter a url of "www.slashtemp.com" a space is inserted between "slash" and "temp"

How do I avoid this?

Andy

[YaBB Master (Colin)]

every tike I enter a url of www.slash temp.com a space is inserted between "slash" and "temp"

How do I avoid this?

I can't see any obvious reason. When did it start to happen? The last software upgrade to the board, was about two weeks ago.

[Andy]

Colin

I posted a link on November 9th in the Science Fiction topic which worked fine then, but now shows the extra space.

So not the two-weeks-ago upgrade, then...

Andy

[edited for more info]

[YaBB Master (Colin)]

I suspect that it's something to do with 'temp', but can't get any other combination to cause the problem.

There is another problem at the moment with '\' including the one in  . It upsets the spellchecker. Sometimes.

I'll consult the gnu's

[ollythedolly]

  found what i want!!!!

'1429 of 1934 Members have made 35114 posts in 10 forums'

olly

[SteveK]

I suspect that it's something to do with 'temp', but can't get any other combination to cause the problem.

There is another problem at the moment with '\' including the one in  . It upsets the spellchecker. Sometimes.

I'll consult the gnu's

I found another unexpected substitution a week or so ago when I posted the 100% muse in the "Jokes" area of the Arms. It caused me to have to (quite literally) recalcuate the last part of the post, as it would not post the original text (that contained an alternative work for Donkey!)

SteveK

[Tony H]

There's a red hand next to the van der graf thread - what does that mean please? Also some have smileys and question marks....

[YaBB Master (Colin)]

There's a red hand next to the van der graf thread - what does that mean please? Also some have smileys and question marks....

It's just whatever icon the person who started the topic, chose.