Question regarding vBulletin and bandwidth usage

[newvbuser]

Hi guys I am new vBulletin customer, and am currently using UBB Infopop 5.47e on linux. Since I do not have mod_gzip on my apache, bandwidth costs are killing me. Plus my # of users are going up and I am guessing after 120+ or so users concurrent, UBB will choke so I am looking at other products and this includes vBulletin.

I presume you guys are using PHP's gzip compiled option and compression with this vBulletin?

I hope I am not being too intrusive, but could somone moderator/admin here please tell me what kind of page views you have / day, and if compression is turned on how many gigs/day bandwidth you guys use to maintain this very busy forum? Also a very brief specs of the server perhaps?

This would really help me understand how much bandwidth is needed with vBulletin. I plan on installing Redhat Linux on a dedicated server with Amd 650, 256 megs ram, 20gigs hd.

By the way, which version of Redhat Linux is better as a web server? 6.2 or 7.1?

Any info regarding these issues would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Regards, Rick.

[SaintDog]

I am sorry if I am not an admin, but maybe I can help a small amount in regards to your questions. See below for the answers/opinions:

1. Is GZIP used with vBulletin?
Yes, but you have to have GZIP installed on your server, within the Admin CP you may choose whether to turn it on or off, as well as what level to set it on (1-9 I think).

2. Which version of RH Linux is better?
This is my own personal thing, but I like to have the most up to date software (unless it is beta) on my computer/server (either one) so I would have to go with Red Hat 7.1

As far as bandiwidth goes, I can not speak for this site because I do not know for sure and do not own it, but bandiwidth would really depend on if you plan to allow downloads (attachments), how many visitors you get, ect.

Most sites that run vBulletin do not use too much bandwidth unless they are highly visited sites such as vBulletin.org (here), vBulletin.com, SitePoint.com, ect.

You would be better off asking FireFly or one of the admins as far and the use of bandwidth here or at vb.com. I would say this forum would use a little more seeing as it has all the hacks and it is more graphically intense.