RSS Bandwidth?

[A Posse Ad Esse]

Hi all,
Just curious about those who use RSS deal with bandwidth issues.
Is it as bad as I've seen reported? I looked at the forum feed for NPT and found it's around 20kb in size so I can see how could be an issue.

Some illl behaved RSS aggregators check feeds for updates every hour (sometimes more). Assuming this case for now, lets also assume people leave whatever RSS software they use running for 6 hours a day...Bandwidth use could be potentially huge:

20kb file x 6 hours x 5,000 RSS subscribers = 600000kb/580ish mb/day
600000kbperday x 30 = 18000000kb or 17 gb per month!

Feel free to point out anything here. I don't know if 5,000 subscribers is good, bad or about right. It just seemed like a nice round number.

Anyone have any tips or tricks for properly implementing an RSS feed? I've looked at Nooked, but wasn't happy with how difficult it seemed to get in touch. I'm looking to use RSS as a notifier really, updated to announce new daily content.
The feed itself will barely contain anything, considerably less than the NPT forum feed at somewhere around 4/5kb.

Really just want to see how other people deal with the bandwidth drain.

cheers,
-Mark

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hi Mark,

Good question and I'm probably not really the right person to answer it, considering I'm not overly concerned about 'bandwidth drain'.

The NPT and superaffiliatehandbook.com are located on a separate server with gobs and gobs of bandwidth available.

I see 'bandwidth drain' as a GOOD thing.

The more that's being used, the happier I am... it all represents visitors interested in, and looking at, my sites. What could be better than that?

I guess it all depends on what you're planning to create a feed for... your blog? If that's the case, the bandwidth won't be anything to be concerned about.

Cheers,
Ros