Slashdot Mirror
Good Demo System For A High-Bandwidth Link?
FuzzyDaddy writes "My company is planning on demonstrating a 2.5 Gigabit per second link to some potential customers in the next few months. Now, we have all the equipment needed to measure how well the link is performing, but we'd like to put together a cheap 'Gee Whiz' demonstration. Surely other /.'ers have put together similar demos in the past. What combination of computers, network adapters, and software have you used to demonstrate high data rate links to potential customers?"
... but do you're math in bits not bytes... that'd be like 53 minutes in bit time (oops).
I know it's lame to answer my own post, but for a possible demo setting, you can put a DVD ISO image at a webpage and get it to the demo computer.
Mathematically speaking, let's say DVD's content is 9.4 GB, which is equivalent to 75.2 GBits. Divide this by 2.5 GBit/sec = 30.08 secs. Since "typical" TCP/IP utilization is roughly 70%, divide this number with 0.7, so the estimated transfer time is roughly 43 seconds, plus some delay if the source is pretty far away from the demo place.
Transfering a full DVD content in less than 1 minute is damn impressive. Just let them taste the "raw" power of the 2.5 GBit link.
If you want to use streaming, make sure you have a high end CPU to back it up. Note that Ethernet is poor in contention management. It would exacerbate multi-client performance, but you can avoid this using FDDI based cards, which some clients find it not desirable. But it can be a good demo if their main motive is for tele-conferencing or whatnot.
If you want to gain more insights, here's an article by Intel. It's their advertisements for IXP, but nevertheless a good read with nice statistics.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
here:
http://proj.sunet.se/E2E/
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
If you feel up to it, you can also suck up a little. If they're in architecture, art, film or music, take some examples of their work (not anything illegal or infringing,) encode them in insanely high resolution or bitrate, and get them off of your own server while you're there. If they're an engineering firm, go over to the US Patent Office site at uspto.gov and grab some high-quality pictures of the patents your client has been awarded. If they're a bank or brokerage or something dealing with numbers, show them databases the size of the entire state of Nebraska, after downloading them in just a few seconds. Lawyers and doctors need to access huge amounts of data (court rulings, medical records, what have you) so you could get online and show them how quickly you can locate obscure references. Educational institutions probably already have a nice big broadband, but access to online publications and research materials, as well as very fast and efficient inter-library catalog software running over the internet, can make the higher-ups in the school submit totally to your every whim.
Remember, if you're talking to managers, use the terms "efficient," "on-demand," "more/most cost-effective," and "the bottom line." Synergize!
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
DVD is 8mbps, this link is 2.5Gbps. A dozen DVD's won't even make a dent in the capacity of this line, you'll need 2 to 3 hundred DVD's playing at once...
If you can show this (videowall) it would be very impressive!
--Blerik
Do a 'time machine' demonstration. Throttle the bandwidth to, say, 56k and explain that this was 'The Internet' ten or twelve years ago. Demonstrate some moderately taxing application for the time (like a large download).
Huh? 10-12 years ago the median speed for net access was NOT 56K. it still was a happy 1.5mbps I had T-1's installed over 15 years ago, and have a pair of HP routers sitting here that are 16 years old. Top speed was near 10mbps with a T-3 (speed limited by the router capabilities NOT the Link) Remember T1 and T3 lines are massively old.. I messed with my first T1 line in 1984 and the correct colorado routers or other high end equipment that allowed you access to those speeds... it was insanely expensive, just like this horribly oversized link being demonstrated.
I suggest that the person does NOT do this. If there is one person with the customer that knows his stuff, you instaltly discredit your entire product/company with a piece of wrong information like this. it will lose the sale, tarnish the company and probably get you fired.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Then the answer is probably to include upgrading in the demo.
"This is two-way video over a 128k link"
"This is two-way video over a 512k link"
and so on. Notch the quality up each time, until you get to full-screen two-way TV with your link.
Video does seem to be the easiest bandwidth-soak to set up, but everyone's seen it now. It's not exactly gee whiz.
Maybe a simple video-on-demand demo, with half a dozen DVD-quality MPEGs at the top end and a set-top box (more than one?) at the bottom would be suit-attractive.
If you want to get clever, choose DVDs with multiple endings so you can offer the user choices as they view (maybe Roadrunner cartoons are short enough and episodic enough to make this work as a demo).
How about a recording of voices? Lay 2 conversations over each other, and say "this is the number of conversations that can be transferred over a 20kbps link".
Add 8 more conversations "and this is a 100kpbs link"
And so on, until you reach a roar of conversation with the high-end link (1/4 million calls? Ok, maybe that's unrealistic).
I would suggest that you give a demonstration, especially if you are selling execs, showing how this extra speed can save money. Say show them the speed it takes to Backup the system to an other system. Or ability to run a lot of software off a mount where you only need to install it one system. So saving administration time and perhaps license issues.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You should contact some of the people doing the Internet2 project.
They've got to have a bunch of high-bandwidth tests.
If you have trouble contacting them, I have a friend that works with them through Educause.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
I like the strategy...
but how exactly is more bandwidth going to help you deal with more seti@home calculations? The application is extremely cpu-bound.. not bandwidth-bound.... you could have infinite bandwidth, but unless you have a football stadium full of supercomputers, you aren't going to go to #23.