maximum visits to a web site or page at same time

[fulio pen]

I host my own web site by paying $50 per year to a server company. I
wonder if there is a limit on the number of visits to a site or page
at the same time. For instance, a certain number of people are
visiting a web site or a page, the newcomers will get a message saying
the site or page is currently busy, and they have to come back later.

If there is a limit, I believe the allowed number of simultaneous
visits varies among server companies.

Thanks for the information.

Fulio Pen

 

[Harlan Messinger]

I host my own web site by paying $50 per year to a server company. I
wonder if there is a limit on the number of visits to a site or page
at the same time. For instance, a certain number of people are
visiting a web site or a page, the newcomers will get a message saying
the site or page is currently busy, and they have to come back later.

If there is a limit, I believe the allowed number of simultaneous
visits varies among server companies.

Wouldn't a question about your hosting company's policies and practices
be best directed to your hosting company?

 

[William Gill]

If there is a limit, I believe the allowed number of simultaneous
visits varies among server companies.

There is a limit, controlled by the server configuration, and as
previously mentioned, you need to talk to your hosting company.

 

[Andy Dingley]

I host my own web site by paying $50 per year to a server company. I
wonder if there is a limit on the number of visits to a site or page
at the same time.

I very much doubt it (literally), although this is subject to the
tricky interpretation of "visit", "site" and "page".

Almost certainly you've purchased a limited amount of server capacity.
This is limited by how many HTML pages it can "serve" over time, in
terms of HTTP requests and the capacity to deliver them. How that maps
onto "user visits" is a difficult question - it's just hard to know
what we mean by "one user" and "a visit".

This will also depend on how much server load is required to serve one
of your pages. A static HTML page will be served with less load than
generating it from PHP and a database. You've probably bought some mix
of "load", "bandwidth" and "disk capacity", but the details are up to
your host. In particular (for complex sites), are you going to find
sharing the server with another site to be a problem? If you both try
using complex highh-load pages, you might run out of "server load"
first. If you're sharing space with an MP3 or video download site,
then it's likely to be "bandwidth" that's the limit.

 

[William Gill]

I very much doubt it (literally), although this is subject to the
tricky interpretation of "visit", "site" and "page".

I interpreted "the number of visits to a site or page at the same time."
to mean "the number of simultaneous requests that will be served" as in
the Apache MaxClients directive, which defaults to 256.

Your comments on what some hosts call "bandwidth" i.e. "how many HTML
pages it can "serve" over time", and other capacity constrictions are
valid. However, I think typically when a host refers to "bandwidth"
they mean "you can deliver X# of Gbits per month." They usually do
their administration after the fact, by processing log info. If you
exceed your limit you get warned or billed a surcharge. I used to
co-own an ISP, but I don't remember how we did it, and I'm sure there
are more sophisticated ways of metering it now.

 

[cwdjrxyz]

I interpreted "the number of visits to a site or page at the same time."
to mean "the number of simultaneous requests that will be served" as in
the Apache MaxClients directive, which defaults to 256.

Your comments on what some hosts call "bandwidth" i.e. "how many HTML
pages it can "serve" over time", and other capacity constrictions are
valid. However, I think typically when a host refers to "bandwidth"
they mean "you can deliver X# of Gbits per month." They usually do
their administration after the fact, by processing log info. If you
exceed your limit you get warned or billed a surcharge. I used to
co-own an ISP, but I don't remember how we did it, and I'm sure there
are more sophisticated ways of metering it now.

I get up to a maximum number of GB of bandwidth per month. If that is
exceeded, I will get charged for the excess bandwidth at the end of
the month. Other hosts sometimes just cut off your site until the end
of the month if you exceed the bandwidth you have paid for. I can
limit my bandwidth per hour, or other time unit or can limit the
number of visitors signed into it at one time in several different
ways. This is done from the account control panel. I have "unlimited"
disc storage space. The host says you can not put up a page that uses
over a certain percentage of server capacity. If you exceed this,
which likely would require something very extreme such as massive data
bases or computing, your site gets closed down until the problem is
corrected.

For the most part, html servers just slow down as they begin to become
overloaded. They download part of the data at a time, The time between
download "spurts" becomes longer and longer as more and more people
are using the server. In effect the slowdown is shared by all users
of the server. This situation will not do for a busy streaming media
site, such as a web radio or TV station. A certain minimum download
rate is required to keep the media streaming. Thus a special media
server often is set up to limit the number of people viewing it at one
time. When that limit is exceeded, no one else can get on until some
people sign out. Typically when too busy, you get a message that the
service is too busy to use.

 

[fulio pen]

There is a limit, controlled by the server configuration, and as
previously mentioned, you need to talk to your hosting company.

I contacted the hosting company, and got the following reply:

Dear Customer,
It can handle more than 50 people access the site in the same time.

It sounds that my site can accommodate a small audience only. Thanks
for information.

 

[William Gill]

I get up to a maximum number of GB of bandwidth per month. If that is
exceeded, I will get charged for the excess bandwidth at the end of
the month. ...

Bandwidth is an old analog term. In general it refers to how much
spectrum is used/available, and thus the capacity. The term did not
port well to the digital world, because its use introduced too much
ambiguity. i.e. 1000 Khz means 1,000,000 full cycles every second.
Seconds are the agreed to standard interval or period. You won't see
cycles per week, cycles per hour, or anything else. When a hosting
service uses "bandwidth" to mean how many gigabits per month, he/she may
be using a "pipe" that only works at 45 megabits per second to connect
to the internet at large. That "pipe" is shared by all his/her
customers. When he/she tries to feed more bits than that, the excess is
queued or dropped.

... They download part of the data at a time, The time between
download "spurts" becomes longer and longer as more and more people
are using the server.

Well... Sometimes the "spurts" are the result of requests being queued
or the bursty "packet" nature of TCP/IP ("data" is broken up; put into
packets numbered; sent; received; resequenced if necessary; and
reassembled).

... This situation will not do for a busy streaming media
site, such as a web radio or TV station. A certain minimum download
rate is required to keep the media streaming. Thus a special media
server often is set up to limit the number of people viewing it at one
time. When that limit is exceeded, no one else can get on until some
people sign out. Typically when too busy, you get a message that the
service is too busy to use.

The media is always streaming. The question is; is it streaming
efficiently enough.

To prevent the interval between packets in any source/destination stream
from being intolerable to a specific "service", it is necessary to have
faster "pipes", faster "pumps" (servers), and/or fewer recipients. Also
keep in mind that the "last mile" (the part between the net and the
recipient) is probably the biggest choke point (the slowest). In the
old telephone world echo was not a problem on shorter connections,
because even if the echo was "relatively loud", it was happening almost
in sync with what it was echoing, so the brain didn't notice. On longer
calls the delay made the echo separate itself in time from the original
(delay). We couldn't fix the time delay, but we could suppress the
volume of the echo in an effort to keep the brain happy. A
non-technical example is a Casino. The dealer(server) can only deal
cards (packets) so fast, the table can only be so small (faster
delivery), but some players won't be happy if they are losing their
money too slowly. So we limit the number of seats at the table (limit
the delay between cards/packets) so that the dealer can get that unhappy
player his/her next card faster.

<disclaimer> all of this may not hold up to intense technical scrutiny,
but it's close enough for government work. Anyway, I think it's way
beyond the scope of this group</disclaimer>

 

[dorayme]

I get up to a maximum number of GB of bandwidth per month. If that is
exceeded, I will get charged for the excess bandwidth at the end of
the month. Other hosts sometimes just cut off your site until the end
of the month if you exceed the bandwidth you have paid for.

Mine throttles back the speed from broadband to dialup (actually
and meanly in the case of Optus, less than normal 56K dialup)

 

[William Gill]

It sounds that my site can accommodate a small audience only. Thanks
for information.

Don't be too disappointed, that may only mean 50 people can "ask" at the
same exact instant. Once a page is served and displayed, hopefully the
user will take a few seconds to take in your information. Consider also,
when the user hits enter to request your page, once the browser gets it,
the browser may issue several more requests for images, stylesheets, and
any other resource your "page" needs. Each of these requests is one of
those "50 people" your host is talking about. But HTTP is stateless, so
unless those "50 people" are in perfect sync, matching each request
continuously and instantaneously, there can be any number of people
viewing your site.

If you are really concerned, lurk in this group, DON'T follow the advice
and techniques, and then you will only have to worry about new, first
time visitors. Nobody will stay long, they won't come back, and you
won't have to worry about congestion. :-D