[Nottingham] Too much traffic

[Alex Tibbles]

> No, they're not, because each message has to be
> emailed to each member
> on the list. If the number of users increases or
> the number of messages
> increases, the overall traffic on the lists server
> rises with a N^2
> complexity. A forum's traffic would be closer to 
> linear.
i fail to see how a mail list is n^2 versus linear =N
for forum.

email:
1 email comes in, M (= number of users) emails come
out, giving (1 + M) * L (length of message) bytes
total. so, throughput is N * L * (1 + M). N is the
number of message / unit time, and L is the average
message length.

forum:
1 post goes in, m ( =< M) people read it (assuming
that no-one reads a message twice). so total is N * L
* (1 + m).
however, L here is going to be much since it includes
HTML (as someone else [sorry for forgetting who]
pointed out). even if we could fine a lynx-capable,
graphics-free forum it will be noticably larger (10%
at the very least).

so basically, the difference is (L+HTML / L) * ((1 +
m) / M). which is independent of the number of
messages and the number of users.

alex

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