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Using Linux To Make a Slow, Awful WAN Connection
Julie188 writes "This is a brilliant little Linux trick from Windows fanboy Tyson Kopczynski. He wanted to test a new Windows 7 feature called Branch Cache, which caches remote data on the local machine to reduce traffic on a stressed out WAN connection. But how to fake a crappy WAN? Linux. 'The command that I executed (tc) made use of Linux Traffic Control (a kernel thing) which allows me to easily interject 100ms latency on eth1. Boff, Bonk, Pow, Plop, Kapow, swa-a-p, whamm, zzzzzwap, bam ... instant WAN crappiness,' he writes."
This seems to be valuable in situations where you are developing an application that will be accessing a database behind a dsl firewall. It would be nice to be able to profile the performance on your local network, instead of having it run too slowly to be used in the field. This happened to me once, and I fixed the problem by using a subselect, instead of multiple sql commands, but this wasn't readily obvious as the library was hiding the details of the process, and the speed of the local network compensated for the ineffiency(sp) of the code.
Intel 8945J integrated wireless on my laptop. Dual boot, Zenwalk Linux and XP MCE 2005. Until the most recent driver from Intel, the wireless card was *significantly* stabler under Linux.
Who needs wireless - I've got an Atherlos L1 gigabit ethernet controller on the motherboard - despite it being years old, all vista drivers for it are dogshit slow AND crash under any significant load. Under linux it works just fine. For the one vista system I must run I had to waste as slot on a PCIe gig-e card and use that instead.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Author of TFA said his original intent was to highlight using Linux to simulate network crapfulness, but enough folks have asked your question that he's planning a followup with the actual caching results.
SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!