137 upvotes, 6 direct replies (showing 6)
View submission: Image Hosting on Reddit
How does Reddit have the bandwidth capability for this when it barely has it for the normal text demand from its users? I don't want to see the Reddit unable to connect message more than the usual 3 or 4 times a day.
Comment by unkz at 21/06/2016 at 16:20 UTC
38 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I would imagine that static image data would be much easier to serve across a CDN than dynamic content. Bandwidth isn't the issue.
Comment by lyspr at 21/06/2016 at 16:24 UTC
15 upvotes, 4 direct replies
It's sad that it's gotten this point of "I want a massive website that millions of people use to only crash a couple times per day."
Where is all this money going and why is it even possible to see that message still?
Comment by ww_crimson at 21/06/2016 at 17:00 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I believe a lot of the high load issues we see from "normal text" are due to insanely large threads with heavily nested comments that get refreshed thousands of times per second. This typically happens during major sporting events, etc. Could be totally wrong, but I recall reading something like that a few months back in one of these announcement posts.
Comment by Theblandyman at 22/06/2016 at 01:45 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I can take a stab at this and hopefully provide a more true answer than the other comments.
Basically, none of these images are actually being hosted or access on the Reddit servers that you are thinking of. Instead, Reddit is using Amazon's Web Services (AWS) which provides them a virtual server with cloud storage, called S3. S3 is really really neat because it automatically grows as more and more data is added to the service, and automatically switches to faster servers with more available bandwidth if demand becomes high. Even though these images and the platform is hosted on AWS, Reddit makes it look like they are hosting them by masking the S3 url behind a reddit.com url.
This is just about the best way for that they could have implemented a service like this. I am a huge proponent for AWS and use it every single day at work, as well as on my personal projects. The fact that they are using AWS for this could even signal plans to eventually host the entire site on AWS, which would be amazing.
Comment by gctaylor at 21/06/2016 at 16:37 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It's a lot more complicated than that. Bandwidth isn't the issue.
Comment by xiongchiamiov at 22/06/2016 at 05:17 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Those things are entirely different at a technical level; if you wanted to look at car analogies, it'd be like asking "why did you put a bigger stereo system in? The engine already stalls every now and then."
Bandwidth is not a problem for reddit. Generating very computationally expensive pages is, but those images are already generated.