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A Look At Microsoft's 'Mini Internet' For Testing IE

Posted by Soulskill on from the a-series-of-tiny-tubes dept.

MrSeb writes "With the grandiose bluster that only an aging juggernaut can pull off, Microsoft has detailed the Internet Explorer Performance Lab and its extraordinary efforts to ensure IE9 is competitive and IE10 is the fastest browser in the world. Here are a few bullet points: 128 test computers, 20,000 tests per day, over 850 metrics analyzed, 480GB of runtime data per day, and a granularity of just 100 nanoseconds. The data is reported to 11 server-class (16-core, 16GB of RAM) computers, and the data is stored on a 24-core, 64GB SQL server. The 'mini internet' has content servers, DNS servers, and network emulators (to model various different latencies, throughputs, packet loss)."

6 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Could use the real internet eh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not just use the real internet?

    1. Re:Could use the real internet eh! by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They wanted to account for any kind of lag, so by having it all in house and disconnected from even their internal network, they have control over all variables so everything is equal.

      They did this post on their blog yesterday http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/

      They care about it so they created a genuine imitation of the real thing.

      Honestly, I'd go at some of the pages I have to each day, which are ludicrous in their use of content and scripting - web developers just pick up and drop widgets all over the place, never a look toward what impact it has on the page being interpreted or used on the receiving end. I know I've got a bad one when I hear the processor fan kick in for a stinkin' web page!!!

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. But will it run Linux? by erroneus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I couldn't resist. But with all the work and effort and resources going into this, how is it that operations a tiny fraction of this can generate fast, reliable and standards complaint browsers better than MSIE?

    Microsoft, the problem isn't that you're not spending enough money. It's that you're not doing it right.

    1. Re:But will it run Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      yes
      http://bellard.org/jslinux/

    2. Re:But will it run Linux? by jader3rd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's 2012 and IE9 still doesn't have a built-in spellchecker for text areas!

      If IE had a spell checker you'd call it bloat. When it's still 2012 and browsers running on Windows 8 won't need to worry about it because it'll be built into the OS, would that relieve your frustration?

  3. Re:Was /. been bought or what? by weszz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the building windows 8 blogs are actually pretty good, as long as you know that it's going to be pumping up how cool windows 8 will be, and question what is in the cool-aid you are drinking, it's worth a read now and then. They give background information on decisions they are making and why some things are the way they are as well as where they plan to take them.