Is it possible

[Keroberts1]

Is it possible to have the client report back to the server say half way adn save its progress? I've noticed that alot of test are not finished because many people don't have the attention span to stick with any one project for the 2 weeks a single test can take. However, I am sure they would at least send back their results so that someone else can finish the test. After all who wants cycles to go to waste.

Perhaps a feature where someone ca nreturn progress on a test but also forfeit the right ot finish it. This would prevent people from wastefully backing up their tests repeatedly and eating up bandwith.

[ceselb]

This has a large risk of generating errors. Probably isn't worth it.

[Keroberts1]

perhaps i don't know... It will become more important as we progress dow nthe line though. The tests are going to be taking lnger and longer the farther we get. Eventually we'll need something like this as the problem becomes more severe.

[Frodo42]

It would probably take another server, as the current server seems to be pretty overloaded already, to save the work you need to send these 1-2 MB files for every test. That would be something like 200 MB/day or more ...
If things work the way I think they do, then it would take a lot of changes in diffrent systems to make something like this work.

[Keroberts1]

i don't see how 200 MB/day is alot I regularly download more music than that in an hour. what type of bandwidth are we operating with?

[Frodo42]

In my understanding it is not so much the connection from the server to the internet that's the problem (bandwith) but the load on the server itself. 200 MB/day is quite a big load, especially as you can't count on it coming in evenly distributed over the day. I just see that the server at present have problems answering clients at all times and the homepage is loading pretty slowly. 200 MB/day trafic costs something like 10 dollars/month at Pair.com, so I guess it's not the big money that's needed, but still something as the server is (to my knowledge) not paid for at the moment.
I believe that Louie/David would appreciate extra server-capacity. But I don't know if and how it could be incorperated in the current system.
Anyways these questions needs answers from Louie, David or someone else who knows more about these things than me.

[Mystwalker]

What just came to my mind:

Has anyone ever tried compressing the cache file?

[tqft]

Just tried it with WinZip - no change.

If you knew something about the file structure and designed something you might do better.

"with any one project for the 2 weeks a single test can take."
I wish - 9 days still to go, 58.8% complete