Pretty surprising how little internet you need to run the forum.

[Mia Chloe]

So a couple months ago I had a very bad experience with my carrier at the time and could barely browse the slightest of applications and websites I often visit but slightly to my surprise the forum ran just fine on 2G. If can remember vividly I think there was a post where we were actually able to conclude that the admin did have some optimization happen back end.

Nevertheless the pretty funny thing is constantly using 5G or 4G barely makes you see a difference in speed but switching up to 2G you'll definitely get a very smooth experience on the forum regardless of page length and even if images are embedded or not. You should try it out
Fun fact; just for the fun of it I literally published this post with 2G and I think I'm gonna keep it for a while lol.

[Btcdeybodi]

I think the forum was built on simple architecture designs which focuses on intensive caching so am not surprised that you can browse on 2G network. Apart from that, the forum also consumes low amount of internet data. There was a time I travelled to a rural community with low Internet connectivity yet I was able to browse through the forum even when other websites and apps were not opening.

Edit: The forum is powered by SMF 

[DYING_S0UL]

So a couple months ago I had a very bad experience with my carrier at the time and could barely browse the slightest of applications and websites I often visit but slightly to my surprise the forum ran just fine on 2G. If can remember vividly I think there was a post where we were actually able to conclude that the admin did have some optimization happen back end.

Nevertheless the pretty funny thing is constantly using 5G or 4G barely makes you see a difference in speed but switching up to 2G you'll definitely get a very smooth experience on the forum regardless of page length and even if images are embedded or not. You should try it out
Fun fact; just for the fun of it I literally published this post with 2G and I think I'm gonna keep it for a while lol.

By 2G did you meant "edge (E)" or just plain 2G? Sorry I'm not an expert with these terms. For me, it never really (I think) worked on edge (E) or G, I have only used it on 4G, and 4G+ networks. But one thing I can say for sure is that, even in worst weather or bad network connectivity the forum worked pretty fast. I reside on the village side, and in here the network pretty much keeps switching from 2G to 4G, depending on which room I'm in, but despite that I'm surfing the forum smoothly..whereas other modern sites struggles, won't even load a bit.

[Mia Chloe]

~snip

Depends on the device you are using actually. For older devices it actually displays as the actual 2G but if you are using any of these recent generation devices you get it to display as E there's really not much difference though just that E is slightly more optimised that the actual 2G.

It's basically similar to how 4G is kinda close to 4G+ and H+ too is like an upgrade to 3G. But for this case I'm referring to either E or 2G I've tried both but you'll find E more common.

[DPHOR]

For my experience so far the forum doesn't need superb network to function and with just little Internet connection you will have access to the forum, there are some days that I may be trying to access other site but I can't, then coming back to the forum easily makes you to have access without extremely getting worried as it is very easy to access than other site that is much heavier to access it with the poorest connection. And yes, there are some places where 2G network wouldn't allow you to have much access to that particular site but it opens forum as quickly as possible.

[Lida93]

This isn't new to my knowledge as I have always had to drop to between 3G & 2G(H+ & E) many times I have visited a few of the remote areas in my location (country) were we routinely go to make supplies. I was surprised at first but I figured out that it still works fine but mobile apps were not loading smoothly as the forum.
Some users at a time were suggesting about creating an app for the forum but this is the he part they were missing, the part were such poor networks may not easily give you access to it as it does in this way.

[Charles-Tim]

Depends on the device you are using actually. For older devices it actually displays as the actual 2G but if you are using any of these recent generation devices you get it to display as E there's really not much difference though just that E is slightly more optimised that the actual 2G.

On my older phones like Nokia and BlackBerry, I saw edge which can be changed to 2G sometimes and change back to edge, but I do not remember much about it.

On the Android phones that I have been using since Android 8, I saw 2G, although they are 4G phons. Just like a 5G phone will not show 4.5G but show just 4G. This is according to my own experience about it on the phones that I have used.

2G and Edge are not the same, but you explained that later. Edge is an upgraded version of 2G and it is faster than 2G just as 4.5G is faster than 4G. I saw edge  on my Nokia phone in the past, not older Nokia.

[mcdouglasx]

Just out of curiosity I started downloading the data from this thread. My intention was to calculate how long it takes to open the first time, that is, without any cache involved, and then calculate how long it would take a 2G network to load it.

I obtained the following result:

Code:

Analyzing page weight for: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5585442.0;topicseen
Viewport: 375x375


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  Image (29 files) — Total: 75.95 KB
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      18.86 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/useravatars/avatar_3589532.png
      15.30 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/useravatars/avatar_3588886.png
      13.08 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/useravatars/avatar_3558380.png
      12.54 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/useravatars/avatar_3513442.png
       1.99 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/favicon.ico
       1.13 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/maintab_first.gif
       1.12 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/legendary.gif
       1.11 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/smflogo.gif
       1.07 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/maintab_active_last.gif
       1.04 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/maintab_active_first.gif
       1.01 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/maintab_last.gif
      733.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/www_sm.gif
      681.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/icons/profile_sm.gif
      680.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/star.gif
      572.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/valid-xhtml10.gif
      548.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/powered-php.gif
      521.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/valid-css.gif
      500.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/cool.gif
      495.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/powered-mysql.gif
      466.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/titlebg.jpg
      463.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/topic/normal_post.gif
      441.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/catbg.jpg
      346.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif
      316.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/filter.gif
      252.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/maintab_active_back.gif
      246.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/upshrink.gif
      211.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/maintab_back.gif
      210.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/ip.gif
      193.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/useroff.gif

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Document (1 file) — Total: 20.01 KB
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      20.01 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5585442.0;topicseen

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Script (2 files) — Total: 7.08 KB
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       4.77 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/default/script.js
       2.31 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/default/xml_topic.js

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  Stylesheet (3 files) — Total: 5.25 KB
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       4.54 KB  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/style.css
      548.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/mobile.css
      176.00 B  https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/default/print.css

====================================================================================================
  TOTAL PAGE WEIGHT: 108.30 KB (35 requests)
====================================================================================================

Since we have a download size of 108.30 KB and a theoretical 2G network speed of 40 Kbps, we multiply the download size by 8, as network speed is measured in bits and file size is in bytes, and then divide by 40.

(108.30 KB × 8 ) = 866.4 Kb

(866.4/40) = 21.66

So we can say that with a 2G network working at its theoretical speed, without involving cache, it would take a little more than 20 seconds under the same conditions as when I did the test.

tool: node page-weight

[Smartvirus]

Nevertheless the pretty funny thing is constantly using 5G or 4G barely makes you see a difference in speed but switching up to 2G you'll definitely get a very smooth experience on the forum regardless of page length and even if images are embedded or not. You should try it out
Fun fact; just for the fun of it I literally published this post with 2G and I think I'm gonna keep it for a while lol.

With the fact that, 5G network isn’t everywhere in our nation and you can only utilize it on certain designated sim, your device first needs to log on to the network before connecting and which can be slow with an unstable network. 2G (Edge) however is almost readily available anywhere and while loading a page that doesn’t contain pictures, you’ll surely have a fair experience using it. I do make this switch when 5G and 4G networks isn’t steady or readily available.

[KingsDen]

The phone works absolutely well on 2G network. I knew that the forum doesn't consume much but I understood that 2G works very well when I stepped out of my house and discovered that 2G network works very well. In my house, my network is 5G but if I move out of my house, I still connect to my network but on 2G. The 2G frequency travels farther than the 5G network.

I don't know the optimization that was used in the backend. I have once accessed this forum on an opera mini browser free mode and I was surprised it worked so well.

[GeorgeJohn]

Forum was built to the extent that any available network signal can access Forum, that's why it doesn't have app, assuming Forum have app like other social media apps it won't have allow easier accessibility the way it does...the programmer of forum websites did a great job, no network that cannot access forum irrespective the strength of the network..I have confirmed it with different devices, even with 2G,3G and both 4G,5G accesses forum,but only thing is that the speed differs especially when you're trying to access threads with images..

[Mia Chloe]

~snip

The number and G only depicts what generation of network they're basically the same thing the only difference is just improvement by optimisation. 4.5 G literally doesn't really exist it's all 4G companies just prefer to sugar coat the 4G devices with either 4G+ or LTE it doesn't mean it's a different generation it's just simply optimisation.

~snip

Yeah you have a point but it's gonna load up around a max of 10 seconds. The only slight limitation would be caching and as more of it is gradually stored you'll average 3 to 5 seconds on most pages.

[Charles-Tim]

The number and G only depicts what generation of network they're basically the same thing the only difference is just improvement by optimisation. 4.5 G literally doesn't really exist it's all 4G companies just prefer to sugar coat the 4G devices with either 4G+ or LTE it doesn't mean it's a different generation it's just simply optimisation.

Yes, edge and 2G are both the same generation which is 2G or the second generation, but still they are not the same thing. That is the reason they have different names to differentiate them for people to know how fast their Internet speeds are. Although, I know you understand that.

[BlackBoss_]

So a couple months ago I had a very bad experience with my carrier at the time and could barely browse the slightest of applications and websites I often visit but slightly to my surprise the forum ran just fine on 2G. If can remember vividly I think there was a post where we were actually able to conclude that the admin did have some optimization happen back end.

It is your experience when visiting the forum, not your experience of running or hosting a forum. What you wrote is kind of confusing with a word "run, running", and I think  you should change it.

Using a forum is simple while hosting or running a forum is complicated especially a big one like Bitcoin forum.

The forum is simple in interface and it is helpful for people who have limited bandwidth for their Internet access. Sometimes you can read posts with recommendations on minimizing the use of images in posts, with the same reason, for as best as experience as possible for forum users, especially users who are in remote areas and with not too quality and abundant bandwidth for Internet access.

[Lucius]

The forum is quite "lightweight" compared to many of today's web sites that are full of multimedia and will load slowly at slower speeds. I can't test how the forum works on 2G because I think they turned off that network in my country, but I can say that the forum works very well (relatively fast) with Tor, which many people complain about slowing down their surfing, although I don't know if that applies to this forum or surfing in general.

However, some topics/posts that are full of images will be harder to load with slower speeds - like this one for example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5584438.0

[Tetu100]

Is no news that the forum need  lesser network capacity to function. I have noticed this ever since I joined the forum and this has been so helpful because it has safed me much in terms of data cost especially now that data is very expensive . And one amazing thing is that with just a data subscription of about 1g on my gadget  I'm pretty  covered for the week.

[ibminer]

If you add ;wap to every URL you could probably get away with a 56K modem.

[noorman0]

-snip-
2G (Edge) however is almost readily available anywhere and while loading a page that doesn’t contain pictures, you’ll surely have a fair experience using it.

To load a forum page without images, simply add ";wap2" to the end of the url. The layout may be a bit messy, and it lacks the quote feature and post attachment buttons. I think this really helps with extreme internet limitations.

[dzungmobile]

To load a forum page without images, simply add ";wap2" to the end of the url. The layout may be a bit messy, and it lacks the quote feature and post attachment buttons. I think this really helps with extreme internet limitations.

Not only wap2, there are two others.

You can use wap, wap2 or imode at the end of an url
Like this
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5584438.0;wap
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5584438.0;wap2
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5584438.0;imode

[DYING_S0UL]

To load a forum page without images, simply add ";wap2" to the end of the url. The layout may be a bit messy, and it lacks the quote feature and post attachment buttons. I think this really helps with extreme internet limitations.

Not only wap2, there are two others.

You can use wap, wap2 or imode at the end of an url
Like this
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5584438.0;wap
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5584438.0;wap2
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5584438.0;imode

Now what's this "wap" thing or "imode"  suppose to be? I'm not really familiar with this, in fact I have never known this thing (calling it a feature) until today, only realizing it after seeing your comment. All of their after apperacnce seems identical to me though...

And it's a manual method right? I mean every time i need it, I'll have to manually add those keywords at the ending, page by page?