Thread:Project:Support desk/Impact of having redirects/forwards/reply (2)

Quick shot without profiling or such: I think it will not influence performance and if, then only minimally. A redirect basically only is a row in a table just like you have for any page. For the database system it should not matter, if you have 100 or 10.000 pages inside the DB. Maybe you want to grant more resources to keep the system running fluently also when it is bigger (more RAM, more CPU cycles and so), but when you do, the system should work just as before.

The only possible impact I see is when you often call redirect pages instead of their targets. This creates an additional call as MediaWiki first starts processing your request of the redirect page and then has to go to the target page and process that one as well. However, I guess it depends on the server load, if these additional requests are a problem for your system. Should they be, the cheapest solution will be throwing hardware at the problem until it is gone.

Btw: Your MediaWiki version is outdated and has known security vulnerablities. You should think about updating to a newer version like 1.19, which offers Long Term Support.