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The recommendations given below will help you put together the necessary hardware, software, and network connections for running the VolanoChat server.
As a general guideline, you can estimate that 1,000 people actively chatting in a single VolanoChat server will use less than 10 percent CPU usage of a 400 MHz Intel Pentium II processor and less than 100 MB of resident memory when running VolanoChat using Sun's JDK 1.2.1 on Solaris 7. To compare that with other platforms, see The Volano Report.
Once your VolanoChat server is up and running, you can expect the following network usage shown for a VolanoChat server handling 1,000 chat connections per day:
Total connections: 1,000 per day Chat messages transferred: 13.77 megabytes per day Average inbound bandwidth: 5.95 kilobits per second Average outbound bandwidth: 10.56 kilobits per second Maximum inbound bandwidth: 11.55 kilobits per second Maximum outbound bandwidth: 20.35 kilobits per second
The bandwidth shown above includes the requirements for delivering advertisements from a remote ad server through your server out to the banner areas of the VolanoChat applet.
We have found that each chat connection lasts for about 34 minutes on average. These numbers are based on our VolanoChat demonstration server, so your network usage could vary considerably depending on the usage patterns of your community and your VolanoChat configuration (such as how many people are permitted in each room, for example). If you expect 10,000 or 100,000 chat connections per day, simply multiply the numbers above by 10 or 100 to arrive at an estimate of your network requirements.
We recommend at least a system equivalent to the following for running a VolanoChat server on a Web site with relatively heavy traffic:
You may want to have 256 MB of RAM if your Web site has very heavy traffic or if you plan to run multiple VolanoChat servers on the same machine. The VolanoChat product itself takes up less than 2 MB of disk space, but its log files can grow quite large with a lot of chat connections. With access logging enabled, you should allow 250 bytes of disk space for every person entering your VolanoChat server. Disk space of 25 MB will allow enough space for your log files to record access for more than 100,000 people.
To run the VolanoChat server, all you need is a Java virtual machine and a Web server. The VolanoChat server application runs on any Java Compatible™ operating system running a Java virtual machine at version 1.1 or later. We generally recommend the latest Java 2 Standard Edition available for your operating system. See our Server Support pages for recommendations on specific operating systems. Java support for operating systems not listed on our Server Support pages can be found at Sun's Java Platform Ports pages.
To run the VolanoChat, MyVolanoChat, and WebVolanoChat applets, all you need is a Java Compatible™ Web browser. The following browsers have the required Java support:
The only network traffic generated by VolanoChat is from delivering the applet to those visiting your site for the first time and from the chat message traffic itself.
The VolanoChat, MyVolanoChat, and WebVolanoChat applets themselves are quite small. Their complete sizes are listed below. The table below specifies the number of bytes for downloading all of the applet's code—not just an initial or core download.
Browser VolanoChat MyVolanoChat WebVolanoChat Microsoft Internet Explorer 3,4,5 54.4 KB 47.0 KB 39.2 KB Netscape Communicator 4,6 64.5 KB 54.6 KB 50.6 KB Netscape Navigator 2,3 127 KB 107 KB 100 KB
Table 2.1: VolanoChat 2.1.10 applet download sizes (1 KB = 1,024 bytes).
The applet is downloaded into the browser automatically when your Web site visitors go to your chat page. The applet is then stored in the browser's cache and is downloaded again only when you upgrade to a new VolanoChat applet version or the browser's cache is cleared.
Based on the statistics from our own demonstration VolanoChat server, you should allow for roughly 80 kilobytes for every person who enters the chat server—30 kilobytes for the chat messages and 50 kilobytes for the applet and its resources, not counting the bytes required to deliver any advertising banners. Most of the people coming to our site are now repeat visitors with many of the files in their Web browser's cache, so you may have higher traffic initially.
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