It's not that it would create resource issues, but it is more resource intensive than a board.
Originally Posted by Rand Al'Thor
I don't know that this is an accurate statement. The page for chat is static. Everything except the text coming in is downloaded once. If I'm reading through pages in the forum, I'm constantly requesting full page content including images and advertisements (both huge resource hogs) as well as all the html and script to run the page. I honestly think having a user participating in chat should be less resource intensive that someone reading through forums. Again, this is implementation dependent. If your chat is using more server resources than normal browsing, that's a red flag in regards to the implementation to me. Additionally, as IPv6 becomes the standard over the next couple of years, true multicast should further reduce those resources.