The big question for me is where are you serving these images from? If you are serving them directly from NASA servers or from an alternative source then you would most likely see very little traffic as most of it will be just URI's pointing to the images. There are a lot of hosting companies out there that claim to deliver unlimited bandwidth (not true I am sure, but worth giving it a shot). GAE seems to have been purely at delivering functionality actual content should be served from other locations if you want to keep bill within reason.
If you are already showing people the images from an location other then GAE you will have to choose to limit the amount of data people can consume (only a static image no zooming, panning or any other fancy stuff) informing visitors that you are unable to afford this functionality due to the high bandwidth demands. If that still won't do it you could attempt to find some company willing to sponsor your efforts, unfortunately the nature of GAE means that portability is not to great so moving to an alternative host will be difficult at best. I have seen many projects that got sponsorship from companies or government organisations to allow them to continue to provide the unique information to viewers. On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Richard Watson <richard.wat...@gmail.com>wrote: > Which resources are being hit the hardest? Outgoing bandwidth? > > > On Wednesday, August 22, 2012 6:51:45 AM UTC+2, Torsten Becker wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> since two years I’m running a blog at GAE focusing the Arctic and as an >> unique feature a Google Map with daily high resolution Arctic satellite >> images from NASA was included. The NASA images need to be tiled, cached and >> served and this process runs on GAE, too. >> >> Usually interest is low during dark Arctic Winter and rises in September >> the time sea ice reaches its minimum extent. No problem so far with the >> free quota on outgoing bandwidth. >> >> This year is different: Latest Arctic storm reduced sea ice extent by a >> million square kilometers in a week and public interest was so high free >> quota was exhausted 5 hours after reset. >> >> Now - end of August - it is absolutely clear that this year will or has >> already broke all records in terms of sea ice minimum and makes a major >> step direction ice free-ness. When in a few years the Arctic lacks sea ice >> completely in September, it will change weather pattern all over the >> northern hemisphere - one explanation of accelerating public interests. >> >> I’d like to mention the project is ad free and totally beyond any >> economic interests. All I want is to keep it running and give everybody on >> the planet the chance to see with his own eyes how dramatic the situation >> in the Arctic is. True color satellite images are free of interpretation >> and do not lead to discussions whether there is sea ice or not. >> >> Here is the thing: If I enable billing to satisfy the need for pure >> information I’m bankrupt next month. If not 99% of the users are going to >> see nothing, get frustrated and possibly never come back. >> >> So my best option is to close the site now. >> >> What do you think? >> >> -- Torsten >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Google App Engine" group. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/-/OTYSfYfbDgoJ. > > To post to this group, send email to google-appengine@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > google-appengine+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to google-appengine@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to google-appengine+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
