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I am working solo on an AS3 Facebook App project of the Interactive Quiz type nature.

  • What amount of bandwidth would it take for a simple Facebook app to run?
  • What sort of traffic would be produced on a server as the result of hosting a Facebook app?
  • How much traffic should we expect from running a Facebook app?
  • What are the adverse effects of hosting a Facebook app on a server (even if they are minimal)?
  • Is there a way to check if someone else's web host supports PHP?
  • What sort of stress will be exerted upon a sever that hosts a Facebook app?

Any discussion that can shed light on these points would make me happy!

DISCLAIMER: I have little knowledge about servers and this will be my first Facebook App project. All I am looking for is an answer and not a down vote. Down votes are very costly when you only had 5 rep in the first place.

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Not sure if I know 100% what you are talking about. What do you mean when you say Facebook App? Are you just going to make a survey and put it up on facebook? or use facebook api to create your survey and allow facebook function? Which ever the case I don't think anyone can predict the amount of traffic. And It should not be any different then not using the facebook app – Spooks Feb 21 '12 at 21:55
My questions are not about functionality, they are about how hosting a facebook app on a server affects the server. I am not creating a survey, I am developing an interactive quiz game using AS3 for the front end. – Graeme Feb 21 '12 at 21:58
Facebook has potential for massive amounts of incoming traffic. But it's all a matter of how much you advertise, and how much you expect to get. – thedaian Feb 21 '12 at 22:05
What sorts of traffic would be produced? This question is directly related to the PHP back end of the programming. As far as quantity of traffic, I am just asking for a ball park/theoretical figure of how much bandwidth would be taken up if 100 users were using the app simultaneously for example. – Graeme Feb 21 '12 at 22:06

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Think of your "Facebook App" as simply a web page being embedded into a Facebook div. You still host it, just like any other page. So ask yourself these same questions, but replace "Facebook" with "Web page".

Like any webpage, your page on Facebook has the potential for very little traffic, or huge amounts of traffic -- it all depends on how well it is marketed, linked to, and deemed interesting by users.

So my advice would be to step back, imagine this whole thing as just a web page, and see if you can answer the questions from that perspective. Calculate how much load it takes to serve a single page or store data for a single user. Take those estimates, then estimate how many users/how much traffic you think you'll get, and go from there. If you've got those answers, then you probably answer the questions related to it being on Facebook.

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I agree, you can't put a hard number on expected load, only calculate what you might need in case of x number of visitors. Not only the server load matters, in this case also the throughput to your servers internetconnection could be a problem. Simultaneous users is key here. If you have only a 100 megabit upload from your servers, a minimum of 1 megabyte download file size per user and a 20 megabit downsteam line per user, handling thousands of users can be a big issue. – Thomas Feb 22 '12 at 12:43
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Perhaps a solution would be to run a local host using MAMP and conducting "stress tests" on the local server. That could give you a quantitative idea of what amount of traffic to expect. I don't know too much about servers but maybe this idea will inspire you in the right direction

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A down vote with no constructive comments – Graeme Feb 25 '12 at 15:25

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