Everyone got their pencils?
Bandwidth. According to webopedia, it's defined as:
(1) A range within a band of frequencies or wavelengths.
(2) The amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time.
This term, however, seems to mean nothing to most people who don't have any bandwidth in the first place.
Let me explain. Anyone with a personal domain has an allotted amount of bandwidth they can use (usually per month, sometimes per day). Bandwidth is used anytime someone pulls any piece of information from the server on which your files are kept. That means any image, any html file, any video file, any anything from your server (and by default, your domain) that is seen or clicked on by anyone is using up bandwidth.
In large fandoms like this one (NSYNC), many people tend to use up other people's bandwidth by posting pictures. This is the largest problem area. Because sometimes pictures from people's domains are posted anywhere and everywhere without any thought to what it means to their bandwidth issues.
People, those of us with the bandwidth pay for the bandwidth. If you abuse the bandwidth and we go over our limit, a variety of things could happen, depending on the hosting company. On the low end of the spectrum, it's possible that you could knock a complete site offline for the day, having used up its bandwidth allotment for a day. Higher up on the spectrum, you could force the hosting company to charge us more money for every bit of bandwidth over the limit that's used.
At worst, and this happened to me a while ago, a hosting company could completely delete our account because it was being hit too much by people. So you see, posting a picture from someone's personal domain isn't cool unless you have their permission. As an example. I've volunteered space for raedoro to upload any future vids she makes. She has my expressed permission to link it in her journal any time. And that's how it works! Just talk to the owner or ask permission. Frankly, it's just common courtesy.
For the most part, hotlinking to larger, corporate sites (ex: MTV.com) isn't as much of a problem because they, more than likely, have dedicated servers and can handle that kind of traffic. Afterall, they WANT people to come to their sites, so they pay accordingly to allow that to happen. Most personal domains of the *NSYNC variety don't have that luxury. So if you want people to see pictures that the owner has put up for consumption, link them to the entire site and tell them where to go or upload them to your own space. If they want them shared, please do it in a way that will allow us to continue to share in the future.
Also, please respect any requests from site owners when we ask not to share the link, or not to direct-link files. We do it for a reason.
I realize that non-site owners may have no idea about this, so I just wanted to maybe get the word out.
p.s. I, by no means, am trying to speak for others, btw. But I do know that this is something that takes place far too often and I just want others to know that bad things can happen to our sites when it's abused.
(1) A range within a band of frequencies or wavelengths.
(2) The amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time.
This term, however, seems to mean nothing to most people who don't have any bandwidth in the first place.
Let me explain. Anyone with a personal domain has an allotted amount of bandwidth they can use (usually per month, sometimes per day). Bandwidth is used anytime someone pulls any piece of information from the server on which your files are kept. That means any image, any html file, any video file, any anything from your server (and by default, your domain) that is seen or clicked on by anyone is using up bandwidth.
In large fandoms like this one (NSYNC), many people tend to use up other people's bandwidth by posting pictures. This is the largest problem area. Because sometimes pictures from people's domains are posted anywhere and everywhere without any thought to what it means to their bandwidth issues.
People, those of us with the bandwidth pay for the bandwidth. If you abuse the bandwidth and we go over our limit, a variety of things could happen, depending on the hosting company. On the low end of the spectrum, it's possible that you could knock a complete site offline for the day, having used up its bandwidth allotment for a day. Higher up on the spectrum, you could force the hosting company to charge us more money for every bit of bandwidth over the limit that's used.
At worst, and this happened to me a while ago, a hosting company could completely delete our account because it was being hit too much by people. So you see, posting a picture from someone's personal domain isn't cool unless you have their permission. As an example. I've volunteered space for raedoro to upload any future vids she makes. She has my expressed permission to link it in her journal any time. And that's how it works! Just talk to the owner or ask permission. Frankly, it's just common courtesy.
For the most part, hotlinking to larger, corporate sites (ex: MTV.com) isn't as much of a problem because they, more than likely, have dedicated servers and can handle that kind of traffic. Afterall, they WANT people to come to their sites, so they pay accordingly to allow that to happen. Most personal domains of the *NSYNC variety don't have that luxury. So if you want people to see pictures that the owner has put up for consumption, link them to the entire site and tell them where to go or upload them to your own space. If they want them shared, please do it in a way that will allow us to continue to share in the future.
Also, please respect any requests from site owners when we ask not to share the link, or not to direct-link files. We do it for a reason.
I realize that non-site owners may have no idea about this, so I just wanted to maybe get the word out.
p.s. I, by no means, am trying to speak for others, btw. But I do know that this is something that takes place far too often and I just want others to know that bad things can happen to our sites when it's abused.