Current network bandwidth problems
2/6/2002
The problem
When your SETI@home screensaver downloads a work unit, the data flows from a server in our laboratory, through the University of California at Berkeley campus network, and through a connection to the commercial Internet. This connection is shared by all UCB Internet users - departmental web and FTP sites, email, SETI@home, and so on. The University pays for bandwidth on this connection; it is currently buying 70 megabits per second (Mbps). The student residence hall have a separate 40 Mbps connection.
Until recently, SETI@home was given about 25 Mbps, and the remaining 45 Mbps was shared by the rest of campus. But starting last month (January 2002) the bandwidth used by the rest of campus increased in an unexpected and unexplained way. During peak periods the demand now exceeds 70 Mbps. If SETI@home continued to use 25 Mbps, the performance of all other outgoing traffic would suffer.
The UCB network administrators have worked hard to balance the bandwidth needs of SETI@home and the rest of campus. Currently, SETI@home traffic is given lower priority than other traffic. During peak periods (typically 10 AM - 10 PM PST) SETI@home averages 6 Mbps, and sometimes gets no bandwidth. During non-peak periods SETI@home gets as much as 50 Mbps.
When SETI@home is not getting enough bandwidth, our data server backs up - all of its processes are waiting to send data, and it can't accept new connections. During these periods, your screensaver will get report that it "can't connect to server".
The impact on our overall computing rate is significant but not too serious - the rate has dropped about 25%. But many SETI@home users are unhappy that their computers are sitting idle for many hours, waiting for data. We share this unhappiness, and are working to solve the problem.
Short-term solutions
We're working on several short-term solutions:
Increase the bandwidth of UCB's network connection. We hope to "expand the pipe" by about 10 Mbps - enough to ease, but not eliminate, the crisis. The issue is money - bandwidth costs about $300 a month per megabit, and neither SETI@home nor the university has budgeted for this cost.
Send data more efficiently. Currently work units are encoded as text. By sending them in binary, we can shrink them by about 25%. (Note: data compression isn't effective for our data, which is primarily random noise). This change will require a new version of the client software.
Increase the amount of computation per work unit. Doubling the CPU time per work unit - by looking at more chirp rates, for example - will reduce bandwidth by 50%. There is scientific justification for doing this, although the law of diminishing returns applies. This will also require a new version of the client software.
Long-term solutions
The long-term solution is to allow work units to be sent from servers outside UC Berkeley. This could be done, for example, by sending work units to servers at organizations - companies and universities - that are willing to donate part of their outgoing network bandwidth to SETI@home. In addition to solving the current problem, this could greatly increase our overall data capacity, enabling us to search for ET signals in a wider frequency band.
This solution represents a significant change to our software; we will use this approach in our next-generation software. We are seeking funding to develop this software, and it won't be ready for at least 6 months.
What you can do
There are a couple of things you can do to keep your computers busy processing SETI@home data:
If you connect manually (e.g., over a modem) try connecting during off hours (23:00 to 3:00 Pacific Standard Time, or 7:00 to 11:00 UT). You can check the Server status page to see if we're currently dropping connections.
Download more than one work unit when you connect. This can be done manually, or by automated workunit caching software. Example programs include SetiQueue for Windows, or Seti Unit Manager for Macintosh. For more information about other SETI@home add-ons see our links page.
To help us achieve a short-term solution, you can help in two ways:
Donate to SETI@home. This will enable us to buy network bandwidth.
Help us find "bandwidth sponsors". We hope that a major commercial ISP might donate bandwidth to UC Berkeley to help SETI@home. If you work for, or have contacts in, such a company, please contact us.
Yes, I've always felt apple's lower end stuff is a bargain. The new imac and ibook are great buys. The top end powermac stuff is what is ridiculously overpriced.
I remember like 7 years ago that by now we were all going to be using JAVA based network computers using PUSH technology such as pointcast. Whatever happen to that?
Here is the near top of the line dell system I'm able to purchase for $1759 shipped. This includes a 2ghz pentium 3, 256 megs of ram, dvd, cd burner, 80 gig hard drive and 64 megs geoforce 2mx w/17 in monitor.
Here is a 933mhz Mac with 80 gig HD, 256 megs of ram, radeon 7500, and a superdrive for $2600. This unit has no monitor but does come with a superdrive.
I purchased a mouseman wheel optical when they first came out a couple of years ago. I've been very pleased with this mouse. It has 4 buttons + wheel, which is surely enough for anyone. The design is very comfortable, plus if you look at Intellimouse Explorer it appears to be very similar in design to the mouseman. Another cool feature of the mouseman, is the blue LED that is USB powered. It looks really cool in the dark too. I've looked at the newer wireless mice, but I have no reason to go wireless plus it isn't the same form factor as the mouseman wheel.
Acutally it would take about 10 hours, but I guess we could switch to 802.11a, or better yet ecode it to DIVX on site so it would take only 15-30 mins.
I know a guy who works at the local Cinemark, I can have him stick an 802.11b access point hooked to the storage system. Imagine having a perfect digital copy of a movie on Gnutella the same day it's released?
One thing that is not going to help Paypal is Billpoint's full purchase protection promotion which is prominently displayed on every auction with billpoint. This will convince Joe Sixpack that paypal is some type of unprotected rogue service.
Could the states higher experts, possibly former MS employees to guide them through the code or would that be seen as a conflict of interest since the technical experts in question are former employees? There has to be a lot of people who have worked with the windows source code over the years.
A bandaged Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., takes part in a Washington news conference to discuss campaign finance reform, Monday, Feb. 11, 2002. Last week, McCain had a cancerous lesion removed from the left side of his nose which was diagnosed as the earliest form of melanoma and was removed. (AP
Photo/Stephen J. Boitano)
One Last Push: Call Now!
Thank you to all those who phoned and faxed Members of Congress over the past week and urged them to support the Shays-Meehan bill. We've heard many reports of offices flooded with calls on the issue, but the fight is not over.
Recently, the republican party and its leadership stepped up the effort to fight meaningful reform. If you are a Republican, please make sure and mention that fact when you call or fax the following list of Members. Let them know that this issue is important to you and that the passage of Shays-Meehen is necessary in order to restore integrity to America.
Speaker Hastert has declared the campaign finance reform fight "Armageddon" -- and true reform won't come easy. The vote is Wednesday--and we need to keep the pressure on. Below, we have included a list of Members of Congress that we are asking you to call or fax. Please let these members of Congress know that they must vote for Shays-Meehan. In addition, let them know to vote against the poison pill amendments and the sham Ney Bill.
Please call or fax the following list of Representatives:
Please also call your Representative at 1-800-660-8244, even if you did so last week. Urge them to support Shays-Meehan and oppose the sham Ney bill and poison pill amendments.
The House of Representatives uses an e-mail system called "Write Your Rep". You can send e-mails only to your Representative by entering your zip code into the e-mail form - http://www.house.gov/writerep
Will you also send this alert to a friend - or two or five - and ask them to do the same? Let's win true reform THIS WEEK.
I could really see technical minded people eating this stuff up, but the real problem lies with non-techies. Yes, the seti@home screensaver for windows looks cool so non-techies seem to have no problem installing that but will Mary really be willing to have a distributed back up system on her computer? What about gamers, who need every available bit of bandwidth? These technologies are really promising but they need widespread adoption to become a success. That's what made napster so successful, it wasn't bleeding edge technology but it had widespread acceptance.
Even though it wasn't a very popular movie, I am really surprised Jim Carrey didn't get nominated for his work in the Majestic. I thought this year the Academy would throw him a bone after the whole "Man on the Moon" controversy.
Voice navigation systems are cool and they definitely have a "gee wiz" factor, but are they really useful? Sure they have a very short learning curve, but people tend to use alternative navigation methods after using the product for awhile. I remember having voice nav way back in 93 with the soundblaster AWE32. That was really cool back then, but nobody actually used it. Sure voice nav on the computer is much more reliable now via products such as viavoice and dragon, but both those products aren't nearly as fast for an midly experienced using point and click or especially keyboard shortcuts.
I have a lot of friends who have sprint phones with voice nav. They all used it for the first week because it was "cool" but after awhile, they went back to traditional methods. Another example is my father; he got the 02 Infinity Q45 which has loads of tech toys built in. The voice nav is really cool but it's not nearly as fast a clicking a button.
I signed up today for one reason alone, you know all those overpriced DVD's of the documentaries and biographies you see on TV? They have them, although you wouldn't know it from the main page on their site due to poor infotecture.
The cost of distributing products to the shelf in Japan is very expensive compared to the states. Think of NYC, trying to get anything in to NYC is a nightmare. Japan is very similar.
I think one of the motives behind the regional coding is target costing. The idea being that if Region A will buy 1000 DVD's at $9.99 and region D will buy 1000 DVD's at $15.99, you want to prevent region D from buying Region A DVD's at a substantial decrease. Besides profit being the motive, there is also a cost consideration. The cost of getting a DVD to market in Japan is much higher than it is in Florida. DVD companies want to prevent Japanese DVD buyers from skipping the normal channels.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not in favor of this, I'm just speculating as to the motivations behind it.
I enjoyed Space Quest, but what I would really like to see is a new wing commander game. All the wing commander games were so ahead of their time. The last few titles tended to focus on cinema tics more than gameplay. My favorites were Wing Commander 3 and Privateer. Wing commander 3 was so cool for its time, especially with all the cinematic sequences plus it had Mark Hamill;) With the exception of Quake 1, I have never been blown away by a game as much as I was by the WC series.
I think your a little confused here. Each house that gets the DSL service will also get a wireless 802.11b router installed so your house will also serve as an 802.11b access point for users on their network. This way they kill 2 birds with one stone, this is a clever idea if they can get through all the usage and security problems. I don't know how people will if there DSL connection slows down to a snail's pace to due eccessive wireless usage.
I agree with almost everything you said execept for:
Do you really think that in 5-10 years, people are still going to be using bulky beige boxes to connect to the Internet?
How many times have we heard the "PC is dying" routine?" For the past 10 years, we have seen multiple occasions where the PC was on it's deathbed, but yet it still exists today. Hell, by now I was suppose to be running a network computer, using office via my web browser, and getting all my content from "PUSH technology." I do agree that there will be many different ways to connect to the Internet, but the PC is here to stay. The more Internet devices we acquire, the more we will need a PC to manage these devices.
Since I purchased a wireless access point a few months ago, I have no need for a "kitchen computer." I just take my laptop wherever I want to work in my house. I think that since the use of wireless networking continues to grow, people will stick to multifunctional laptops and PDA's rather then spending money on a system that is designed to function in only one specific area.
Slashdot Mirror
2/6/2002
The problem
When your SETI@home screensaver downloads a work unit, the data flows from a server in our laboratory, through the University of California at Berkeley campus network, and through a connection to the commercial Internet. This connection is shared by all UCB Internet users - departmental web and FTP sites, email, SETI@home, and so on. The University pays for bandwidth on this connection; it is currently buying 70 megabits per second (Mbps). The student residence hall have a separate 40 Mbps connection.
Until recently, SETI@home was given about 25 Mbps, and the remaining 45 Mbps was shared by the rest of campus. But starting last month (January 2002) the bandwidth used by the rest of campus increased in an unexpected and unexplained way. During peak periods the demand now exceeds 70 Mbps. If SETI@home continued to use 25 Mbps, the performance of all other outgoing traffic would suffer.
The UCB network administrators have worked hard to balance the bandwidth needs of SETI@home and the rest of campus. Currently, SETI@home traffic is given lower priority than other traffic. During peak periods (typically 10 AM - 10 PM PST) SETI@home averages 6 Mbps, and sometimes gets no bandwidth. During non-peak periods SETI@home gets as much as 50 Mbps.
When SETI@home is not getting enough bandwidth, our data server backs up - all of its processes are waiting to send data, and it can't accept new connections. During these periods, your screensaver will get report that it "can't connect to server".
The impact on our overall computing rate is significant but not too serious - the rate has dropped about 25%. But many SETI@home users are unhappy that their computers are sitting idle for many hours, waiting for data. We share this unhappiness, and are working to solve the problem.
Short-term solutions
We're working on several short-term solutions:
Increase the bandwidth of UCB's network connection. We hope to "expand the pipe" by about 10 Mbps - enough to ease, but not eliminate, the crisis. The issue is money - bandwidth costs about $300 a month per megabit, and neither SETI@home nor the university has budgeted for this cost.
Send data more efficiently. Currently work units are encoded as text. By sending them in binary, we can shrink them by about 25%. (Note: data compression isn't effective for our data, which is primarily random noise). This change will require a new version of the client software. Increase the amount of computation per work unit. Doubling the CPU time per work unit - by looking at more chirp rates, for example - will reduce bandwidth by 50%. There is scientific justification for doing this, although the law of diminishing returns applies. This will also require a new version of the client software. Long-term solutions
The long-term solution is to allow work units to be sent from servers outside UC Berkeley. This could be done, for example, by sending work units to servers at organizations - companies and universities - that are willing to donate part of their outgoing network bandwidth to SETI@home. In addition to solving the current problem, this could greatly increase our overall data capacity, enabling us to search for ET signals in a wider frequency band.
This solution represents a significant change to our software; we will use this approach in our next-generation software. We are seeking funding to develop this software, and it won't be ready for at least 6 months.
What you can do There are a couple of things you can do to keep your computers busy processing SETI@home data:
If you connect manually (e.g., over a modem) try connecting during off hours (23:00 to 3:00 Pacific Standard Time, or 7:00 to 11:00 UT). You can check the Server status page to see if we're currently dropping connections. Download more than one work unit when you connect. This can be done manually, or by automated workunit caching software. Example programs include SetiQueue for Windows, or Seti Unit Manager for Macintosh. For more information about other SETI@home add-ons see our links page.
To help us achieve a short-term solution, you can help in two ways:
Donate to SETI@home. This will enable us to buy network bandwidth. Help us find "bandwidth sponsors". We hope that a major commercial ISP might donate bandwidth to UC Berkeley to help SETI@home. If you work for, or have contacts in, such a company, please contact us.
Just out of curiosity, are there any major manufactures who will install non-redhat distros?
Yes, I've always felt apple's lower end stuff is a bargain. The new imac and ibook are great buys. The top end powermac stuff is what is ridiculously overpriced.
I remember like 7 years ago that by now we were all going to be using JAVA based network computers using PUSH technology such as pointcast. Whatever happen to that?
Its a pentium 4 not a 3. I wish they had a 2 ghz pentium 3 ir would probably be REALLY fast.
Here is the near top of the line dell system I'm able to purchase for $1759 shipped. This includes a 2ghz pentium 3, 256 megs of ram, dvd, cd burner, 80 gig hard drive and 64 megs geoforce 2mx w/17 in monitor.
Here is a 933mhz Mac with 80 gig HD, 256 megs of ram, radeon 7500, and a superdrive for $2600. This unit has no monitor but does come with a superdrive.
I purchased a mouseman wheel optical when they first came out a couple of years ago. I've been very pleased with this mouse. It has 4 buttons + wheel, which is surely enough for anyone. The design is very comfortable, plus if you look at Intellimouse Explorer it appears to be very similar in design to the mouseman. Another cool feature of the mouseman, is the blue LED that is USB powered. It looks really cool in the dark too. I've looked at the newer wireless mice, but I have no reason to go wireless plus it isn't the same form factor as the mouseman wheel.
Acutally it would take about 10 hours, but I guess we could switch to 802.11a, or better yet ecode it to DIVX on site so it would take only 15-30 mins.
I know a guy who works at the local Cinemark, I can have him stick an 802.11b access point hooked to the storage system. Imagine having a perfect digital copy of a movie on Gnutella the same day it's released?
One thing that is not going to help Paypal is Billpoint's full purchase protection promotion which is prominently displayed on every auction with billpoint. This will convince Joe Sixpack that paypal is some type of unprotected rogue service.
I will stick with my girlfriend for Valentine's day.
Could the states higher experts, possibly former MS employees to guide them through the code or would that be seen as a conflict of interest since the technical experts in question are former employees? There has to be a lot of people who have worked with the windows source code over the years.
This is from http://www.mccain2000.com/
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM: ACTION ALERT!!!
A bandaged Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., takes part in a Washington news conference to discuss campaign finance reform, Monday, Feb. 11, 2002. Last week, McCain had a cancerous lesion removed from the left side of his nose which was diagnosed as the earliest form of melanoma and was removed. (AP
Photo/Stephen J. Boitano)
One Last Push: Call Now!
Thank you to all those who phoned and faxed Members of Congress over the past week and urged them to support the Shays-Meehan bill. We've heard many reports of offices flooded with calls on the issue, but the fight is not over.
Recently, the republican party and its leadership stepped up the effort to fight meaningful reform. If you are a Republican, please make sure and mention that fact when you call or fax the following list of Members. Let them know that this issue is important to you and that the passage of Shays-Meehen is necessary in order to restore integrity to America.
Speaker Hastert has declared the campaign finance reform fight "Armageddon" -- and true reform won't come easy. The vote is Wednesday--and we need to keep the pressure on. Below, we have included a list of Members of Congress that we are asking you to call or fax. Please let these members of Congress know that they must vote for Shays-Meehan. In addition, let them know to vote against the poison pill amendments and the sham Ney Bill.
Please call or fax the following list of Representatives:
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL-6) (202) 225-4921 - (202) 225-2082 fax
Rep. Elton Gallegy (R-CA-23) (202) 225-5811 - (202) 225-1100 fax
Rep. Doug Ose (R- CA-3) (202) 225-5716 - (202) 226-1298 fax
Rep. Michael Collins (R -GA-3) (202) 225-5901 - (202) 225-2515 fax
Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA-9) (202) 225-5211 - (202) 225-8272 fax
Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL-20) (202) 225-5271 - (202) 225-5880 fax
Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R -MO-9) (202) 225-2956 - (202) 226-0326 fax
Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI-7) (202) 225-6276 - (202) 225-6281 fax
Rep. Mark Kennedy (R-MN-2) (202) 225-2331 - (202) 225-6475 fax
Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ-2) 202) 225-6572 - (202)225-3318 fax
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ-11) (202) 225-5034 - (202) 225-3186 fax
Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ-3) (202) 225-4765 - (202) 225-0778 fax
Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-NJ-7) (202) 225-5361 - (202) 225-9460 fax
Rep. John McHugh (R-NY-24) (202)225-4611 - (202)226-0621 fax
Rep. Sue Kelly (R-NY-19) (202) 225-5441 - (202) 225-3289 fax
Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-OH-5) (202) 225-6405 - (202)225-1985 fax
Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH-16) (202) 225-3876 - (202)225-3059 fax
Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH-19) (202) 225-5731 - (202) 225-3307 fax
Rep. Melissa Hart (R-PA-4) (202) 225-2565 - (202) 226-2274 fax
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA-7) (202) 225-2011 - (202) 225-8137 fax
Rep. John Duncan (R-TN-2) (202) 225-5435 - (202)225-6440 fax
Rep. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV-2) (202) 225-2711 - (202) 225-7856 fax
Please also call your Representative at 1-800-660-8244, even if you did so last week. Urge them to support Shays-Meehan and oppose the sham Ney bill and poison pill amendments.
The House of Representatives uses an e-mail system called "Write Your Rep". You can send e-mails only to your Representative by entering your zip code into the e-mail form - http://www.house.gov/writerep
Will you also send this alert to a friend - or two or five - and ask them to do the same? Let's win true reform THIS WEEK.
Thank you for your continued support.
I could really see technical minded people eating this stuff up, but the real problem lies with non-techies. Yes, the seti@home screensaver for windows looks cool so non-techies seem to have no problem installing that but will Mary really be willing to have a distributed back up system on her computer? What about gamers, who need every available bit of bandwidth? These technologies are really promising but they need widespread adoption to become a success. That's what made napster so successful, it wasn't bleeding edge technology but it had widespread acceptance.
Even though it wasn't a very popular movie, I am really surprised Jim Carrey didn't get nominated for his work in the Majestic. I thought this year the Academy would throw him a bone after the whole "Man on the Moon" controversy.
If you haven't read it already, check out Lessig's ten questions from December.
I have a lot of friends who have sprint phones with voice nav. They all used it for the first week because it was "cool" but after awhile, they went back to traditional methods. Another example is my father; he got the 02 Infinity Q45 which has loads of tech toys built in. The voice nav is really cool but it's not nearly as fast a clicking a button.
I signed up today for one reason alone, you know all those overpriced DVD's of the documentaries and biographies you see on TV? They have them, although you wouldn't know it from the main page on their site due to poor infotecture.
The cost of distributing products to the shelf in Japan is very expensive compared to the states. Think of NYC, trying to get anything in to NYC is a nightmare. Japan is very similar.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not in favor of this, I'm just speculating as to the motivations behind it.
I enjoyed Space Quest, but what I would really like to see is a new wing commander game. All the wing commander games were so ahead of their time. The last few titles tended to focus on cinema tics more than gameplay. My favorites were Wing Commander 3 and Privateer. Wing commander 3 was so cool for its time, especially with all the cinematic sequences plus it had Mark Hamill ;) With the exception of Quake 1, I have never been blown away by a game as much as I was by the WC series.
I think your a little confused here. Each house that gets the DSL service will also get a wireless 802.11b router installed so your house will also serve as an 802.11b access point for users on their network. This way they kill 2 birds with one stone, this is a clever idea if they can get through all the usage and security problems. I don't know how people will if there DSL connection slows down to a snail's pace to due eccessive wireless usage.
Robot bartenders are old news, the great technolgist known as Rocky, had one in his fourth movie.
Do you really think that in 5-10 years, people are still going to be using bulky beige boxes to connect to the Internet?
How many times have we heard the "PC is dying" routine?" For the past 10 years, we have seen multiple occasions where the PC was on it's deathbed, but yet it still exists today. Hell, by now I was suppose to be running a network computer, using office via my web browser, and getting all my content from "PUSH technology." I do agree that there will be many different ways to connect to the Internet, but the PC is here to stay. The more Internet devices we acquire, the more we will need a PC to manage these devices.
Since I purchased a wireless access point a few months ago, I have no need for a "kitchen computer." I just take my laptop wherever I want to work in my house. I think that since the use of wireless networking continues to grow, people will stick to multifunctional laptops and PDA's rather then spending money on a system that is designed to function in only one specific area.