Squidoo Eats Bandwidth!

Squidoo Eats Bandwidth

Warning! Squidoo Lenses Eats Download Usage

Let me start by saying I am a Squidoo fan. It may improve with time, but at the time of this writing (Sep/Oct 09), I have found that working/accessing Squidoo lenses (articles) can eat a lot of your (allowable) download allowance. I will tell you what first alerted me to this and why I think if you use Squidoo, you should at least be aware of some of these findings.

What First Alerted Me To This Problem

My ISP plan allowed me a monthly download usage of 12 GigaKb (GB) per month. I normally use between 2-3 GB per month (and I do a lot of web work, from listings at selling venues, publishing at my own sites, research on the net ... in fact, all 7 days and nights of a week, you will find me working at something net-related. So my monthly plan is already bigger and higher than most).

I joined Squidoo on 21 September 2009 and played around with it for half a day. Then for the next 2 days - I played around with it almost non-stop - like 12 to 16 hours, each day (which is not unusual for me). After the 3rd day with Squidoo, I found that I could barely move on the internet! Loading of any web page took AGES!

On checking with my ISP (Telstra, Bigpond, Australia) I found that within the last 48 hours I had used up so much of my allowable download usage that I was over limit and they had slowed me down to 64kbps (a real crawl. I might as well watch grass grow.) In fact, their usage meter showed I had used up over 7.2 GigaKb in just 2 days!!!!! Something that has never happened in all my years on the internet.

And in case you are wondering ... I only ever watch 1-2 youTube movies like once every 3 months, I don't have peer-to-peer sharing, and in fact no heavy consumption of any kind (music, videos, animations, etc.)

So what caused this massive consumption? It was either my computer, my ISP, or the only new thing that I was doing ... working/playing on Squidoo and learning how to make lenses and how to use their modules. That seemed the most likely as that was all I did for those 2 days of high consumption and that was the only new thing on my system.

Steps Taken

To enable me to get back on the net (at a workable rate), I had to upgrade my ISP plan. (Now I am up to 25GB per month at a much higher cost!. "Not happy Jan") Then for the next 2 days (24-25 Sep 09), I pretty much avoided Squidoo and monitored my usage consumption. All back to normal. Conclusion: not my ISP at error and nothing in my system nor my normal activities was ferociously eating download usage.

Back Onto Squidoo

On the following day, 26 Sep 09 - I went back to work on Squidoo. I worked for like half a day on Squidoo. (by "work", I mean making/editing Squidoo articles, adding/deleting modules - all the general Squidoo things one needs to do to make a lens/article)

Surprise Surprise. Not.

The day's download consumption shot up. Close to 1.8 GB - in one day!!!!!

Below is a screen capture of the usage consumption as provided by my ISP's usage meter.

Research, Test, Findings

A kind Squidoo forum member suggested that I look into a network monitor called Netlimiter Monitor. I did. I got the (freeware) Netlimiter 2 Monitor

Test Environment Settings

This is briefly what I did to do my testing.
* no other application running (to eliminate mixed results or confusion)
* only one browser used - Google Chrome (another browser might have given slightly different results - but insignificant)
* with Netlimiter Monitor, I recorded total usage (of one application - here being Chrome) at one point, did something, recorded total usage again, and noted the difference. That difference is what that one last action used in download consumption.
* I repeated the same steps multiple times Squidoo articles (lenses, as they are called on Squidoo). And for each lens, multiple rounds of testing with duplicate actions. So my sampling, though not statistically huge, is rather convincing.
* I also visited a number of my standard normal sites to check what kind of consumption they took.

Results from my normal Websites

Conclusion: all under 1Mb, all ok. This gives me a ball-park idea of the normal kinds of download consumption.
However these are just to access a page. With Squidoo, if you are making articles (lenses), you need to be working in Squidoo - which is where I think the problem is.

Testing Squidoo - Findings

As mentioned, these results are from testing multiple (of my) lenses; each multiple times. The following are results when working in Squidoo - making/editing pages.

Squidoo Results on Download Usage

Action	Consumption Range	Comments
click "Dashboard"	apprx 27 Kb	OK
click "Edit" (within Dashboard)	52 - 121 Kb	so so
click "Add Module"	apprx 66 Kb	OK
add a module (e.g. chosen "Black Box")	apprx 133 Kb	so so
remove module (from above)	apprx 131 Kb	so so
click "Publish"	125 - 207 Kb	hmmm ...
refresh lens/Squidoo article (this is regardless whether you are logged in or if you are just a visitor to a Squidoo article)	303-426 Kb	oh oh

Conclusions

At a first read, the findings on the download consumption with respect to the editing actions you have to take in Squidoo does not seem so bad. But it definitely NOT GOOD when you realize:

• that the editing actions cannot be taken on their own. When making/editing an article in Squidoo, you will be doing multiple of these kinds of actions (e.g. more than one add/delete of modules) and all of them must be aggregated (added) together - which means that at the end, you would have used a lot of download consumption just to make one lens.
• and with any normal page publication, as you work on it, save draft, re-work, re-check, make changes ... everything eats a lot of cumulative download. One can never just do one take on making a page and expect it will be perfect. So expect huge consumption.

Recommendations

Even if you wanted to, don't become obsessed with Squidoo. While I still love it as a publishing/sharing platform, I highly recommend that you not spend too many hours a day on Squidoo - especially in the making/editing lens mode.

Of all the sites I have come across, Squidoo takes:
* an inordinate amount of bandwidth (download consumption) to make/edit lenses (Squidoo pages) - so only do this with extreme moderation. Which unfortunately might mean you cannot produce as many pages, as fast, as you might otherwise want to.
* an even as just a user (you are not a Squidoo member or you are not logged in - just reading various pages), Squidoo lenses (not the front page but the article-pages written by any Squidoo member) also take more download consumption than most other web pages. So again unfortunately, don't over-browse on Squidoo.

I make these (personal) recommendations with a sad heart. While I think Squidoo is a fab place and in the few days I have been there, the feedback I have gotten and the help I have been given, has made me a big Squidoo fan. Nonetheless, I really cannot afford these kinds of huge consumption. And as I am on a larger plan than most home users are, this caution I give is doubly given for those on a fixed, smaller plan.

An Aside: Is It the Squidoo Ads that are the Big Eaters?

I was also wondering if having the ads running on the page made the consumption worse. So I tried to "un-max" the ads running on each of my lenses/articles.

Result: hardly any difference in download consumption - whether it be viewing/refreshing page or in the edit actions one has to take.

Your Len's Ad Settings

While logged and in edit (lens) mode, you can find your ad settings (for each lens) under:
(right hand) Workshop Tools > Lens Settings > check/uncheck "Maxed!" tick-box