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Simple Machines Community Forum

SMF Support => Server Performance and Configuration => Topic started by: maagnh on March 06, 2006, 08:54:34 PM

Title: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: maagnh on March 06, 2006, 08:54:34 PM
First off I want to say that SMF is a great piece of work. Thank you very much for making it available.

I have business class DSL line with 3Mbit download and 1Mbit upload. I have the following server.

P4 1.5Ghz
1.5 gig of ram
300 gig hd

The server is running Windows 2000 with nothing else on it except SMF. How many users online at once do you think my setup will ba able to handle?
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: Ben_S on March 06, 2006, 09:03:00 PM
Depends how you configure it so it's impossible to say and obviously with such a small internet connection it depends on your template.
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: maagnh on March 06, 2006, 09:10:16 PM
I am using the default theme and settings for SMF. I'm running MySQL 5 and PHP 5. SMF seems to be running well and everything is working. Is there some place I can check to gauge utilization/performance?
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: maagnh on March 06, 2006, 09:25:50 PM
I'm hoping to handle an ave. of 35 users online at once.
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: Ben_S on March 06, 2006, 10:30:20 PM
35 should be easy.
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: Joshua Dickerson on March 07, 2006, 11:36:59 AM
Your site is going to appear very slow to your users. I suggest going with some kind of shared hosting.
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: maagnh on March 07, 2006, 03:06:41 PM
Why do think it will be slow for the users? Because of the server or because of the bandwdth?

How does one determine how much bandwdth is needed for a given number of users?
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: Joshua Dickerson on March 07, 2006, 10:48:16 PM
bandwidth. Try serving a page and go somewhere else to see how fast it serves up. Then try having a friend do it at the same time.
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: maagnh on March 08, 2006, 06:57:55 AM
I had 10 people online last night and everyone said the stat at the bottom of SMF was saying an average of .35 seconds on page creation with .4 being the highest reported.

I have no baseline to compare that to and it was only 10 users so I have no idea if that's good or bad or whatever.

Is there any general rule of thumb for figuring how many users a given speed bandwdth can support?
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: Joshua Dickerson on March 08, 2006, 04:38:46 PM
Your server will handle it fine. It is the connection. A rule of thumb? Well, if your page is 20kb and you are serving it 5 times at any given point, that is 100kb upload. If your users are like me, they open up all of the windows on the first page (ie boardindex). While that is loading they read the first loaded, second loaded, so on and so forth. So if there is 5 internal links that are interesting on your page, that will require you to serve 5 pages to that one person.
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: Overseer on March 08, 2006, 05:42:41 PM
^ doesnt that depend on how apache is set up?
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: Joshua Dickerson on March 09, 2006, 12:34:23 AM
huh? You are still going to have to serve the bandwidth no matter what way Apache is setup.
Title: Re: How many users do you think my server will handle?
Post by: Overseer on March 09, 2006, 05:32:42 AM

isn't it possible to throttle each IP to a certain amount of bandwidth? :)
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