The Sametime rich text capabilities added to Sametime 7.5 are much loved by users
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But I think over time they are going to be loathed by network administrators. Why do I say this? Well, I think the method in which the text is transmitted is very heavy, and contains too much wrapping etc. On average looking at my logs, it looks like a simple text message in Sametime sends about 200% more network traffic for IM than previously (this does not include Rich Text or emoticons), when you look at the size of messages that contain Rich Text or emoticons then the amount of traffic being sent compared to previous versions is huge. Why is this and could it be made better?
Well lets take a look at the most simple message of "Hello World" , in previous versions of Sametime, the information sent across the network was basically "Hello World" if you send the same text now in Sametime 7.5 the message sent across the network is:
"<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:#000000;" class="left"><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;">Hello World</span></span>"
So from 11 characters previously to 185 characters, now that doesn't seem too bad, but times that by the number of people in your organization and the additional cost for hardware to record all those chats and starts adding up.
Where things get really crazy though is when you start to send rich text. Take for example the following
This is bold italic bolditalic
Most of us would write this something along the lines of : This is <b>bold</b> <i>italic</i> <b><i>bolditalic</b></i>
Sametime sends it like this:
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:#000000;" class="left"><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;">This is </span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-style:normal;"><b>b</b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-style:normal;"><b>o</b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-style:normal;"><b>l</b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-style:normal;"><b>d</b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;"> </span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>i</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>t</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>a</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>l</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>i</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>c</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;"> </span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>b</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>o</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>l</i></b></span><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>d</i></b>
</span><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>i</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>t</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>a</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>l</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>i</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>c</i></b></span></span>
So you get an idea of why I think this may not necessarily be the most efficient approach. Also I don't reallty understand why, but if you send for example the emoticon
, Sametime will actually send the image across the network to the other side. What most IM clients do is they know a number of emoticons and convert the text to a local image on the other side. Obviously if it was a custom emoticon you would want to send the image, but if every Sametime client has the same basic emoticons why create all that extra network traffic? If every line is going to begin with <span> then why not truncate it something each Sametime client knows like <s~> and have the client on the other end expand it back out to the full <span> ?
But I think over time they are going to be loathed by network administrators. Why do I say this? Well, I think the method in which the text is transmitted is very heavy, and contains too much wrapping etc. On average looking at my logs, it looks like a simple text message in Sametime sends about 200% more network traffic for IM than previously (this does not include Rich Text or emoticons), when you look at the size of messages that contain Rich Text or emoticons then the amount of traffic being sent compared to previous versions is huge. Why is this and could it be made better?
Well lets take a look at the most simple message of "Hello World" , in previous versions of Sametime, the information sent across the network was basically "Hello World" if you send the same text now in Sametime 7.5 the message sent across the network is:
"<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:#000000;" class="left"><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;">Hello World</span></span>"
So from 11 characters previously to 185 characters, now that doesn't seem too bad, but times that by the number of people in your organization and the additional cost for hardware to record all those chats and starts adding up.
Where things get really crazy though is when you start to send rich text. Take for example the following
This is bold italic bolditalic
Most of us would write this something along the lines of : This is <b>bold</b> <i>italic</i> <b><i>bolditalic</b></i>
Sametime sends it like this:
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;color:#000000;" class="left"><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;">This is </span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-style:normal;"><b>b</b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-style:normal;"><b>o</b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-style:normal;"><b>l</b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-style:normal;"><b>d</b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;"> </span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>i</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>t</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>a</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>l</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>i</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;"><i>c</i></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;"> </span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>b</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>o</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>l</i></b></span><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>d</i></b>
</span><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>i</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>t</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>a</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>l</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>i</i></b></span>
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Tahoma;"><b><i>c</i></b></span></span>
So you get an idea of why I think this may not necessarily be the most efficient approach. Also I don't reallty understand why, but if you send for example the emoticon

Comments
..as to the HTML, it looks, well, inefficient
Posted by Gerco At 01:29:45 PM On 10/10/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by ctyler@epilio.com At 01:51:29 PM On 10/10/2007 | - Website - |
Your formatted example HAS to be considered a bug. Full inline styles embedded in span tags for every LETTER. Wow. If that was done on purpose, I think I can honestly say that it's the worst coding I've ever seen.
I suppose they could have translated each character into a binary sequence, and then sent 1 and 0, wrapped in span tags. That might have been worse.
Can we safely assume that you contacted the Sametime folks at Lotus and pointed this out to them?
Posted by Nathan Freeman At 08:53:44 AM On 10/11/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by ctyler@iminstant.com At 08:59:12 AM On 10/11/2007 | - Website - |
"Most of us would write this something along the lines of : This is <b>bold</b> <i>italic</i> <b><i>bolditalic</b></i>"
Surly you mean <b><i>bolditalic</i></b>
Posted by Kerr Rainey At 09:32:07 AM On 10/11/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by Mika Heinonen At 11:05:09 AM On 10/11/2007 | - Website - |
Which speaks volumes about how much that stuff is in need of an update, though.
But at the time, it really was the best way to do it, and be sure you could render in Netscape 3.
Posted by Nathan Freeman At 12:20:03 PM On 10/11/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by Mika Heinonen At 02:00:11 PM On 10/11/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by Vowe At 04:27:23 PM On 10/11/2007 | - Website - |
Perhaps this is planning ahead for when IBM host Sametime and they charge extra for network traffic.
Posted by ctyler@epilio.com At 05:16:42 PM On 10/11/2007 | - Website - |
Of course, if a view is as simple as that, you can almost just as well crank it out as pass-through HTML.
Anyway, Carl, thanks for mentioning. I had a good laugh.
Posted by Fabian At 03:41:13 AM On 10/12/2007 | - Website - |
Does anyone know if there is a mention of this anywhere else in another blog or technote perhaps?
Thanks again for bloggin' this.
Posted by Smilie At 11:19:02 AM On 10/13/2007 | - Website - |