PC Bozo's World bites again (CNN, too)

Jeff Victor - Sun Microsystems Systems Engineer Jeff.Victor at East.Sun.COM
Fri May 29 14:48:57 UTC 1998


Of course, instead of just theorizing about which factors have the greatest 
impact after changing the client's MTU, someone could end this discussion by 
performing the following experiment with:

 * PC with MS Windows
 * Macintosh
 * Unix box

Hook each box up to the same dial-up line, using the same dial-up service.
Measure response time to visit various web sites, ftp sites, etc.  Perform 
various runs with different MTUs.

Of course, to ensure validity of the data, memory and disk caches must be 
cleared between tests, and the tests must be run multiple times to remove the 
effects of caching at the servers and between the servers and the client.

If the PC shows a significant performance improvement at smaller MTUs, but 
the other two don't, we can conclude that Windows is unusual (in a new way).

But if they all behave similarly according to MTU size, Windows would be 
"innocent."

I would be very interested in the results.  Unfortunately, I don't have the 
equipment at home to do this.  Does anyone out there?

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Jeff Victor                                             Voice#: 518-782-1046
Systems Engineer                                          Fax#: 518-783-7359
Sun Microsystems                                    jeff.victor at east.sun.com
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