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From: Ben Black <black@zen.cypher.net> To: Jack Rickard <jack.rickard@boardwatch.com> Cc: Justin W. Newton <justin@priori.net>; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Internet Backbone Index Date: Friday, June 27, 1997 7:07 PM
On Fri, 27 Jun 1997, Jack Rickard wrote:
I don't think I'm missing it. I think I'm disagreeing with it in as
nice
and nonconfrontational a way as I can given the crappy personality I have
apparently your definition of nonconfrontational includes calling people morons. i think i will expand my definition of "editor" to include clueless network engineer wannabes.
As I recall, you specifically began the name calling episode.
to work from. Splitting hairs from here to infinity on what "network" means and what the world wide web is departs rather widely from my
mission
here, so I'm giving it short shrift. If you don't know how ping and traceroute vary from data flows, I can't help much there either.
since you obviously don't know a thing about how things like peering, NAPs, IP routing, and all the other components of network engineering work, i this it humorous.
Actually I know quite a bit about them. If it is obvious to you otherwise, it becomes rather obvious that you don't.
If you want to draw a line of demarcation between a network and its performance, and a web server and its performance, you're free to do
just probably won't buy into it.
and we probably wouldn't either. but since that isn't what anyone is doing, how is this relevant?
On the actual concept that changing all the web servers will move the numbers: It might. It might not. I would probably bet at this point
so. I that
there will be a lot of that going on among the non-moron crowd. I'm kind of hoping for it anyway. And then we'll see if the numbers move. My sense is that they will move some, and not as much as most seem to think. But it's true it could go the other way and be dramatic. I'm open to whatever results derive.
so you are hoping backbone providers move their own home page web servers
in order to skew a severely limited and obviously bogus benchmark? if it
is as easy as that to change the results, don't you think perhaps there is something radically wrong with your methodology? wouldn't that seem to indicate this so-called benchmark isn't really testing what it purports to?
I don't think it will be that easy, which if you could read you would see in the comments you quoted. No, I don't think there is something radically wrong with the methodology. I have no hopes for what providers do. They can do whatever they like. We will continue to publish test results. How they react to them is no affair of mine.