From: Stan Barber <sob@academ.com> To: Justin W. Newton <justin@priori.net>; Larry Vaden <vaden@texoma.net>; Sean Donelan <SEAN@SDG.DRA.COM>; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Internet Backbone Index Date: Friday, June 27, 1997 1:54 PM
Justin writes:
ObAboutTopic: This is possibly the most flawed study on the planet. Remind me to get a fast web server. (And to think, we were going to
They could be. The attempt is to factor that out. ALL measuring agents applied to ALL the backbones. And all contributed more or less equally to the end numbers. If a particular agent ran on a Commodore 64 with a kluged copy of KA9Q, and another agent ran on an Sun Solaris, both results would go into the result pile for all 29 measured networks. The net effect would be that the flaw would be in our "footprint" from which the measurements were taken. This footprint can only be a rough approximation of end user distribution anyway. It would affect absolute values relative to zero, but the relative indexes between networks should not be affected. Since we're looking at the relative relationship primarily, it wouldn't appear important. Jack Rickard ---------- put
our web server in our office, behind a T-1, instead of in real estate near where the real bandwidth is that could be used for customers.).
There are many studies more flawed. Consider some of the studies that the Tobacco Institute has released over the years about the affects of smoking.
Concerning Internet performance, there have always been a variety of ways of measuring it. It all depends on what you are really trying to measure. The Keynote study is attempting to measure something to which the average
Internet user (not engineers) can relate. However, There are also clearly the possibility of artifacts in the data because of the testing machine's
TCP stack or other issues (Vern Paxson has covered these issues at NANOG and IETF meetings over the last few years). Checking their web site, their software appears to run on top of the TCP stacks of many systems, so the known artifacts of some of these platforms could be an issue.
-- Stan | Academ Consulting Services |internet: sob@academ.com Olan | For more info on academ, see this |uucp: {mcsun|amdahl}!academ!sob Barber | URL- http://www.academ.com/academ |Opinions expressed are only mine.