Internet Backbone Index

Fri Jun 27 20:50:55 UTC 1997

Jack,
	I believe that you are missing the point that measuring web server
response time is /not/ the equivalent of measuring backbone performance.

At 12:45 PM 6/27/97 -0600, Jack Rickard wrote:
>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
>----------
>> From: Stan Barber <sob at academ.com>
>> To: Justin W. Newton <justin at priori.net>; Larry Vaden <vaden at texoma.net>;
>Sean Donelan <SEAN at SDG.DRA.COM>; nanog at 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
>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 at 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.
>
>

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Justin W. Newton                  voice: +1-415-482-2840 	
Senior Network Architect            fax: +1-415-482-2844
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