Kevin Rose Load Tests Gmail

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Posted by timothy on Monday July 26, 2004 @01:35PM from the really-pushing-the-envelope dept.

SishGupta writes "Load Testing Gmail - fillmybox@gmail.com A few weeks ago, Kevin Rose of the The Screen Savers decided to load test Google's new email service, Gmail. He asked everyone to email him their favourite 5MB attachments to 'fillmybox@gmail.com.' The test Gmail account is now 102% maxed out. You can read about the test and the results at Kevin Rose.com (his weblog)."

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Re:Slashdot Load Tests Kevin Rose's Web Server by Pieroxy · 2004-07-26 13:43 · Score: 2, Informative

I hope gmail scales better that that... Anyone has a link?

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Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by Feanturi · 2004-07-26 13:45 · Score: 3, Informative

The limit as stated on the quota page is 1000MB, not 1GB. That's why he's at 102%.
Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by drinkypoo · 2004-07-26 13:45 · Score: 1, Informative

Uh no. Colloqually that is true, but 1 GB actually equals 10^9 bytes. It's 1 GiB that equals 10^30 bytes.
It is arguable whether 1GB is 10^9 or 2^30 bytes, however, the strictest and most current definition of 1 GB is 10^9 bytes.

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Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by aaron_ds · 2004-07-26 13:48 · Score: 3, Informative

Actually 1GiB is equal to 1024MiB while 1GB is equal to 1000MB
Re:greatest moment ever on TSS by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-26 13:49 · Score: 3, Informative

Yes I was watching when it happened. I'm sure striger or whatever his name is had a talk with him afterwards.

Kev, Sarah, you guys need to be a little less obvious about your love life on air, either that or rig the playboy contest so sarah wins. that thing still going on?
Video Clip Followup by Uneasysilence · 2004-07-26 14:30 · Score: 2, Informative

Whoops forgot the email.
If you have the clip e-mail me at admin (at) uneasysilence.com I would love to host it
_dan
http://www.uneasysilence.com
Re:Goes to 102%.... by nfg05 · 2004-07-26 15:02 · Score: 5, Informative

Actually, Hotmail allows you to fill about 110% of your capacity before it actually starts to bounce messages. Right now it's a measly 2 MB, but it should be increased to 250 MB in the next few weeks.
Re:Goes to 102%.... by MikeXpop · 2004-07-26 15:08 · Score: 5, Informative

While this is funny and all, I'll explain.

Google offers 1 GB, or 1000 MB, of space. They do this as to not confuse non-tech folk. When you reach 1000 megs, it's 100% full. When you reach the actual limit of 1024 megs, it's 102% full.

Oh, and back when yahoo had a 4 meg limit, my throway's account would gather up spam and it would stop me at 5 megs, or 125% of the limit. No idea what happens now that it's 100 megs.

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Re:conspiracy theories by rnicey · 2004-07-26 15:32 · Score: 4, Informative

What he thinks is most likely a bunch of rot.

Decompress a gig on the fly when you login. Please... Do me a lemon.

The real trick is in the routing for this type of application. When mail is delivered it is switched to a bank of servers which deal with your account (and many others obviously). The messages are indexed and stored.

When you login there will be a range of load balanced servers routing your read requests back to that same bank of storage from the frontline web servers.

Limit management is either done in the application logic, or in the database engine. Under load, with simultaneous receipts it's easy to see why you could go over 100% of storage. It's either that or you have to serialize the delivery per user which would suck and be harder.

It's not a hard concept, but it is tricky to get right in implementation. This is what Google does best though.
The "fill my box" recording: Download by Fog+Dogg · 2004-07-26 15:35 · Score: 5, Informative

Here's the segment from g4techtv captured by me: http://www.members.shaw.ca/fog_dogg_69/fillmybox.w mv
Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by gamgee5273 · 2004-07-26 15:46 · Score: 2, Informative

But no one, except for those of us who know better, call a GB a GB any longer. My Maxtor 200 GB drive is actually 189.77 GB. As much as I love my iPod, my 40 GB iPod is actually a 37.21 GB iPod.
The hard drive manufacturers and the computer manufacturers have been doing this for years, and the average consumer has not noticed. Google is just going with the flow by saying 1 GB = 1000 MB.
Re:"fill my box" segment by 88NoSoup4U88 · 2004-07-26 16:48 · Score: 2, Informative

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115848&cid= 9808280
Re:[OT] Why SI rules by Canberra+Bob · 2004-07-26 17:06 · Score: 2, Informative

I believe 4 degrees C was chosen as that is the temperature at which water is most dense. Not a number picked out of nowhere.
Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by jebiester · 2004-07-26 17:12 · Score: 2, Informative

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, you're ... right!

There's a link showing binary multiples here
Re:greatest moment ever on TSS by swatoa · 2004-07-26 17:50 · Score: 2, Informative

http://www.members.shaw.ca/fog_dogg_69/fillmybox.w mv
Re:Woops! by Kris_J · 2004-07-26 18:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Drinky, your still not fully corrected.
you're .
Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by 1u3hr · 2004-07-26 19:13 · Score: 3, Informative

K is a SI unit prefix which stands for kilo which means 1000. Its a standard, it will never change. so 1 KB is 1 * 1000 Bytes. End of Story.
Correction to Story:
"K" is the unit of temperature, the Kelvin.
"k" is the abbreviation for "kilo", 1,000.
Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by Cody+Hatch · 2004-07-26 19:21 · Score: 3, Informative

The IEC isn't universal? Perhaps, but neither is the ISO. :-) Further, IIRC, the IEC wrote the initial SI standard, and it may have slipped your notice, but we're talking about computers, which is definetly an elec eng topic - and as you yourself state, the IEC is definetly a relevant body for elec eng.

Further, the IEEE (a very relevent body for this topic) has decided that kilo, mega, etc. always and everywhere refer to their base-10 meanings - even if you're talking about bits and bytes, if you are referring to the base-2 meaning, you must explicitly state this on a case by case basis.

Further, the IEC standard has recently been submitted to the IEEE (and also to the ISO, although it's not really their area), and is currently being tested as a "trial-use standard" by the IEEE, and is expected to be officially adopted by it sometime next year.

There is no standard anywhere which defines kilo as 2^10. Kilo, as an SI prefix, is defined to be 10^3. The only prefix defined as 2^10 is Kibi. Well, as far as I'm aware, anyhow. But since the ISO, IEEE, and IEC (which in turn in an umbrella group for the various national standards bodies like ANSI, etc.) all agree on what kilo does and does not mean (and the only groups with an opinion agree on Kibi, I think we're running out of standards groups. If you know of a standard that defines kilo as 2^10, please cite. :-)

None of which, of course, changes the fact that Joe User uses "megabyte" all the time to refer to 1,048,576 bytes, but since hard disk makers have already switched to calling 10^9 bytes a terabyte, I don't see how using the base-2 prefixes can increase the anger and frustration. :-) (And lets not even talk about floppy disks, where 1.44M = 2^10 * 10^3 bytes...)
Re:Goes to 102%.... by eeeuh · 2004-07-26 20:01 · Score: 2, Informative

no no!
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/tmp/file.attach bs=1024k count=5
:P
Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-26 20:31 · Score: 1, Informative

If you want to be precise when describing the number of bits, use the International Electrotechnical Commission's recommendations for binary quantities. The names are a combination of the multiple and the letters "bi" for binary, eg. kibi, mebi, gibi. The wiki page is here, and I've included the relevant table below:

Name Abbr Factor kibi Ki 2^10 = 1024 mebi Mi 2^20 = 1 048 576 gibi Gi 2^30 = 1 073 741 824 tebi Ti 2^40 = 1 099 511 627 776 pebi Pi 2^50 = 1 125 899 906 842 624 exbi Ei 2^60 = 1 152 921 504 606 846 976
Re:1GB = 1024MB so... by TDRighteo · 2004-07-26 22:46 · Score: 4, Informative

Already done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

Unfortunately, this means the standard prefix actually changes for the more "engineering" of the two sizes, and I don't think it has a lot of acceptance.

1 KiB = 2^10 B
1 MiB = 2^20 B
1 GiB = 2^30 B
etc.

They are rather fun to say though.
What's so abhorrent about clarity? by Kaseijin · 2004-07-26 23:27 · Score: 3, Informative

Computers use powers of two for every kind of calculation.
Except when they don't. Binary is dominant, but not universal.
The most important reason of all to do the measurements this way is because it's easier.
Sure, as long as we're dealing with binary systems, sometimes binary multiples will be more convenient. They're even more convenient when they're unambiguous.
It also makes a kind of sense to redefine mega, giga, and tera in terms of base 2 because a byte is a base 2 unit. Why not just go all out when you're using them and make everything else base 2 as well?
We don't go all out. We use base 10 numbers in front of these "base 2" units. Given a computer with eight-bit bytes, 2^8 would fit the architecture better than 2^10; we use the latter number solely because of its proximity to 10^3. And what about those eight bits? 8 is 2^3, a power of two at least, but an odd one if you'll pardon the pun. Why not 2^2 or 2^4? For that matter, why bytes at all? Because we meatbags need to encode text, and English fits in seven bits plus one for parity. Moreover, even if we were using numbers like 3 and 10 for the computers' sake and not our own, it still would make no sense to confuse the meanings of existing words instead of adopting unambiguous terms.
You may not that bits, which come out to a nice, round number in every number base, are measured in base 10.
Except when they aren't. Memory capacity is consistently expressed in binary powers whether using bits or bytes. Most of the networking software I've seen defines a kilobit as 2^10 bits, and some service providers do it too. Expressions of bus speed may depend on the passengers.
It's too much to ask that a microcontroller that reports usage have half of it's hardware devoted to base conversion, especially when the result may come out to some terrible fraction.
Bytes are discrete, and an integer in base 2 is an integer in base 10. A report for human eyes usually has the latter, but none of this is relevant to whether you then divide the number by 1000 or 1024 or not at all. If it makes sense to measure something in groups of 2^10, do so, but call it what it is. More to the point, don't call it what it isn't.
To use your statement, I find that just because people are using mega, giga, and tera with the original meanings just because they're entrenched is folly at best and is better regarded as arrogant.
It has nothing to do with entrenchment; science and technology demand clarity and accuracy.
Re:Old news by FTL · 2004-07-26 23:49 · Score: 2, Informative

> Good test? Old news. A friend of mine, Milo, did this two weeks ago.
Not old news. Your friend simply filled his Gmail account. That's no big deal. Your friend even said "nothing unexpected happened". What makes Kevin Rose's news interesting is that continued traffic on an account can lock out the owner. That's a significant bug in that one can launch a denial of service attack on a Gmail user.

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