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Does having a static webpage open take up bandwidth?
brorstein
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hi all, long-time lurker, first-time poster.
This has been bugging me since I started work at my current place of employment. I work at a very small design firm that has a less-than-knowledgable "tech" guy (I use the term loosely). He repeatedly scolds us about leaving browsers up while we work, saying it slows the whole network down. I have always been under the impression that unless the page you're on is self-reloading, or you're streaming some form of data through an applet or otherwise, a static page is just that - static. The only thing it takes up is memory on the machine it's running on.
Anybody have an idea on how I could respond to this guy next time it comes up? Or is he actually *gasp* right?
This has been bugging me since I started work at my current place of employment. I work at a very small design firm that has a less-than-knowledgable "tech" guy (I use the term loosely). He repeatedly scolds us about leaving browsers up while we work, saying it slows the whole network down. I have always been under the impression that unless the page you're on is self-reloading, or you're streaming some form of data through an applet or otherwise, a static page is just that - static. The only thing it takes up is memory on the machine it's running on.
Anybody have an idea on how I could respond to this guy next time it comes up? Or is he actually *gasp* right?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
brorstein on
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That depends.
Do you want to keep your job?
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Are you guys running off a 56.6? Any page refresh would be neglegible on anything faster. He sounds like an old-school guy, or someone who leanred from one.
edit: Tell him you have the pages in "tabs," and those don't refresh, only the one in the main window.
Responding to misinformation with misinformation generally doesn't help the situation.
tell him hes wrong and explain to him why an already loaded webpage that doesnt have something streaming on it doesnt require more data to be transfered. therefore the network isnt slowed down at all.
be polite not arguementative
To my knowledge, we're on a T1 connection. Which is strange, because it acts slower than my cable connection at home.
A T1 is slower than most broadband connections, at 1.544mbps up/down. Your cable connection is probably 8/1 or something like it.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I was going to suggest this as well. But I have a feeling that ignorance will somehow prevail. You can also try this:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-server1.htm
Short version: a) Client computer requests a page b) Server receives the request c) Server sends the file to the client d) Client receives the file e) Client renders the page. Done. No more data is moving anywhere.
It really astonishes me sometimes how utterly incompetent people worm their way into IT jobs. I worked hard for my computer science degree, so when someone claiming to be a "tech guy" starts spouting total nonsense I get really angry for several reasons. The most obvious is total incompetence, but the spreading of misinformation is troublesome because non-IT people are already often confused about how things really work. Also, the practice of hiring under-qualified workers deflates the base salary for the rest of us. I worked my ass off in college, while Jimbo spent his weekends partying and getting his BA of Arts, but we get paid the same because businesses undervalue good IT workers - because they can't tell when dumbells like this guy are just making up shit as they go.
In fairness, if we're talking about a really small company it's not unlikely that their "tech guy" isn't really in an IT position at all, but rather is a regular employee doing other shit as well who happens to handle all the tech stuff...likely because at the time he was hired he knew more about tech stuff than anybody else, which likely wasn't saying much.
B.net: Kusanku
Dude, just go to a superior and explain you think someone else could do the job better. he obviously doesn't have the tech experience to continue the work any further if there's a chance of impeding the other workers.
He should only do this if 1) He is completely, 100% positive that the "Tech Guy" has no friends in upper management, and 2) He is prepared to take over Tech Guy's job until they hire a replacement, if they can Tech Guy. (Which they should, if his reaction to a problem is to delete shit willy-nilly.)
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Or your IT guy is playing TF2 in his quiet little office and you're messing with his sweet ping.
Initially loading google w/ internet explorer takes approx. .03% of the total network resources to do. If the whole office were to all refresh their browser at once (approx. 16 computers, like I said, small), the max load on the network would be .5% of the total bandwidth. Loading a graphics/plug-in intensive site like nbc.com or the daily show's site, spikes at about .15% on my system. Initially loading iTunes spiked huge at 5% for about a second, then flatlined. Streaming NPR from iTunes see-sawed up to .15% and down to 0. Half of the office is quite illiterate, and really don't know how to stream any sort of audio, so I doubt Pandora's to blame. A couple of us yunguns stream throughout the day, but only audio, and maybe 3 would do it simultaneously.
As for criticizing the tech guy to higher-ups? No dice. He's part owner. Brother of one principal, son of another. Really, the list of things he does inefficiently I could bitch about all day. Spends a shit-ton of overhead on upgrades like double monitors that nobody needs, while ignoring the industry switch to BIM over CAD being a biggie, effing up our drivers amongst CAD/Adobe suites/large and small format printers to the point where any sort of print is a pain in the ass being another. And the predictions about his training are correct. He's an architecture school drop-out who was a draftsman at his dad's office until CAD came around, we're talking the early 80s, then probably spearheaded the infusion of computers and CAD drafting and just slowly morphed into "IT."
In light of all that, I'm going to find a way to prove him wrong on this one point. There's gotta be way to do it without being a jackass.
You should continue to forget about it, as it doesn't tell you dick outside of your LAN port.
1% of 100Mbps is 100% of 1Mbps.
You have a 1.544Mbps external line.
See where the problem lies?
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Gotcha. Well, regardless, every time it's been brought up to most of us, it was due to a web page, w/o any sort of streaming or otherwise. Like I said, there's maybe three people streaming audio in the office at a given time, and even that is probably a rare peak.
The point was the guy was saying that leaving webpages open was taking up resources. When your network tab is open and you're not actually shoving anything down your pipe, because you've just left the webpage open and you're not downloading anything, you're not shoving anything down the company's pipe either. Note that if you're streaming stuff then yes, you're taking up resources, but OP talked about static pages.
So showing you're using 0% of a 100Mbps line actually corresponds quite nicely to 0% of a T1.
Ironically I'm using Process Explorer at the moment and it doesn't seem to care about networking, but I'm pretty convinced that I'm right.