well, I have a client who is running a UBB clone, Boardmaster to be exact. He uses up about 10 GB a month. by switching to a php/mysql based board, will that cut down on traffic?

Not sure. But vbulletin or infopop sites may be better places for answers.

ebird

I don't believe it would make a difference. Bandwidth only comes into play with what is sent and received by clients. So, assuming that VB and UBB send similar sized pages (as in the quantity of HTML per request), use a similar number of images and whatnot, there should be no bandwidth differences.

That is, of course, purely theoretical and I'm not a bandwidth expert. Someone who has used the two boards might be able to help you a little better on the practical side of things. I seem to remember a thread a few weeks or months back about some different forums and the sizes of the pages they dished up - might like a try a search for it, although it will probably be hard to find!

andwidth only comes into play with what is sent and received by clients. So, assuming that VB and UBB send similar sized pages (as in the quantity of HTML per request), use a similar number of images and whatnot, there should be no bandwidth differences

There might be significant differences, I guess between 5 and 15%. I don't know UBB, but the generated code differs. As users display much pages small differences (readable code, whitespace,..) add up...

If you use mod_gzip to compress the html and text, you'll find that most of the bandwidth is .gif files. At that point, it doesn't matter whether you're running UBB, VB, or something else, the more images you throw in, the more bandwidth you'll use.

Yes Walter, that's exactly right. Certainly the MySQL/PHP combo won't determine the bandwidth use of a particular forum package. It depends on how many images they use and all the HTML code.

You will see performance differences since you're using a database backend. As far as bandwidth it will stay the same because bandwidth comes into play when data is transmitted from your server through the network (ISP) to the client (end user). Every time you ftp files to your server you use bandwidth and everytime someone requests a page from your site you also use bandwidth so the difference that you will notice will be with performance and not bandwidth.

Ben