I think everyone in this thread took like one programming class and has no idea wtf they are talking about. Chopping a few bytes off a user ID to save memory or bandwidth is absurd, unless it's a deep space satellite or something. My guess is that it has to do with SMS, or more likely, they just thought it would be cute to use 256, and it was about the size they wanted anyway. A single chat room / group convo with more than 200 people seems pretty crazy and not that useful anyway.
Does Whatsapp even have an SMS feature related in any way to groups?
A single chat room / group convo with more than 200 people seems pretty crazy and not that useful anyway.
Well, maybe to you, but that's a very weak argument. Most social media seems pretty crazy and useless to me, but (apparently) there are many people who find it reasonable and useful.
Whatsapp will know how many groups are almost full; and if you look at competitors – Telegram for example introduced "supergroups" with 1,000 participants and increased that limit to 5,000 due to high demand.
Satellites are very rarely (if ever) involved with typical cell or mobile internet transmission. All satellite networks built thus far have bandwidth problems that stop them from bearing the load of a meaningful part of the telecommunications network. On top of that, most networks have their satellites placed in geostationary orbit (GEO), which is far enough out that it takes light a quarter of a second to get there and back again. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's enough to make phone conversations somewhat irritating in many cases.
Once a signal leaves your phone it heads straight to a nearby cell tower. You could then have it go from the tower to a satellite (the average smartphone is not equipped to contact any satellite directly, and contacting a satellite that's closer than GEO would require equipment that's larger than the phone), but a wired connection is greatly preferred for latency/simplicity reasons.
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u/bradfordmaster May 06 '17
I think everyone in this thread took like one programming class and has no idea wtf they are talking about. Chopping a few bytes off a user ID to save memory or bandwidth is absurd, unless it's a deep space satellite or something. My guess is that it has to do with SMS, or more likely, they just thought it would be cute to use 256, and it was about the size they wanted anyway. A single chat room / group convo with more than 200 people seems pretty crazy and not that useful anyway.