Is RSS A Bandwidth Hog?

If you blog becomes too popular, can RSS kill it by eating up bandwith? Its possible.

Web publishers of XML syndication feeds are learning the hard way that popularity comes with price, says this article by Matt Wicks at eWeek.

As the use of RSS news feeds grows so too does the bandwidth they consume and the demands they put on Web servers.

Some Weblogs and technology Web sites are rethinking the way they publish their RSS feeds as they find that frequent requests from newsreaders can strain their resources.

Experts believe that there is no single solution to the potential bandwidth bottleneck of RSS, but all point to problems in RSS implementations as the culprit.

Dave Winer, co-author of the RSS format and publisher of the Scripting News blog, thinks that content developers need to have a say in how often aggregators allow users to poll.

Some publishers are taking things into their own hands. Slashdot.org has an aggressive policy where it will ban newsreaders that check for its feeds more than once every half hour.

Source: RSS Comes with Bandwidth Price Tag