The USB drive I use has been dropped quite a few times and still works perfectly! Who needs a tape backup or a flash device? These devices are fast and durable.
If I get another one of their drives, Ill get a Firewire version for the extra transfer speed.
I was Crispen on Batmud and could not agree with you more!
BatMud was so far ahead of its time. Batmud combat and leveling system from 1990 is more advanced that the Graphical muds of today. The graphical muds are so simplistic and combat requires little or no team work. Batmud - you had to work together!
unless you were a necro.. but that was another story....
Cool to see a batmud reference - i havent played in year-- stopped after one of the conversions - but i wasted 2.5 years of my life to batmud!
A more interesting comparison would be to see various IDE/PATA drives versus some SATA drives versus SCSI in some real world uses.
Performance and reliability benchmarks would be nice. I dont really care about adding in a RAID version as that dilutes the real comparison of a X vs Y vs Z type hard drives in head to head battle.
Anyone seen a report/analysis of this type?
We are a performance and reliability oriented web hosting company that uses exclusively SCSI hard drives for performance and reliability, but are wondering how close SATA is to SCSI for reliablity and performance.
As mentioned above by Zav, P2P will not work as a viable business solution for managed bandwidth. Companies need to absolutely guarantee that their data delivery will be intact and unaltered. P2P systems allow for Companies data to be altered in transit to the end person. This could have nasty side effects such as virus and Trojan horses being planted in the data.
The Company I work for has been providing highly burstable solutions for many years. We hosted all of the 20th Century Fox and Paramount Picture movies web sites for three years each. For example, we hosted the Titanic Movie, the most trafficked movie web site ever. Everyone had expected that movie to be a flop and when it was a huge hit, we had to have many extra megabits available to satisfy the millions of hits the site was getting.
The experience of hosting two previous Star Trek movie web sites was also very valuable. IBM would be running TV commercials featuring the Star Trek Movie for their Ecommerce solutions and the web site would be hammered with 10,000 accesses per second. As an interesting side note, this is when we found out that Apache and Linux on a $3,000 PC would outperform IRIX and Netscape Web Server on a $50,000 Silicon Graphics Server. We have been a primarily Linux shop ever since.
The knowledge and experience gained by hosting these web sites that needed to be ultra scalable is applied to all our current clients.
We offer both GB per month solutions and Megabit per second solutions. The comments posted above that GB per month is a better value is actually not always true. It will really depend upon your needs. ZeroLag Communications can provide solutions either way and we will show you which way your dollar would go further.
One specific technology we would offer to Companies like Zavâ(TM)s is compression. This has the effect of speeding up a web transfer and at the same time reducing the bandwidth. This is a win/win for both parties. Compression may not work in every situation, but when it does work, the effect is quite amazing on the users experience.
Another technology is an overly engineered network. Our capacity to deliver bandwidth far exceeds the needs of our clients. Most other companies offer the opposite solution or an oversubscribed network model. An oversubscribed network has many dropped packets which often adds extra retransmissions when you least want them, when you have bursting traffic. The person who posted above with ADSL described the problem perfectly. When not being able to send back an ACK successfully, this causes a retransmission. This means MORE bandwidth must be used to send the data and therefore further slows the download times and increases the Companies bandwidth costs!
ZeroLag on the other hand, never drops packets because our internal and edge networks are capable of transfering multiple Gigabits. Our top of the line Cisco Routers, Firewall and Switches are idle even during heavy traffic surges. This scalability is ideal for companies who are concerned about being able to burst.
One other advantage of going with a Company like ZeroLag is we can help your Company build out the servers it will need. We can help you build out a mission critical, fault tolerant, scaleable and secure server infrastructure. This way you can be driving 40 Mph today, jump to 150 Mph hour occasionally when needed and be able to go 220 Mph next year as the business builds.
Please feel free to contact me at ZeroLag Communications if you would like more information.
Thanks,
Greg Strelzoff
Greg at ZeroLag dot com
Re:FR vs PPP is also an imporant performance facto
on
How to Test Your T1?
·
· Score: 1
"We will, however, give the customer an MRTG graph to demonstrate usage on their line."
Wcom and Qwest and the BELL company in our area do NOT allow you to do this and/or do not give you the tools to do this. (They will not share the SNMP passwd.) Kudos to you and your company that you do.
Anyways, the customer always enjoyed finding out what they had gotten and how far apart it was from what they ordered!
FR vs PPP is also an imporant performance factor
on
How to Test Your T1?
·
· Score: 1
I think the discussion of the local loops is not as important as the data connection type.
We are in the Internet web hosting and T1 business, and we regularly 'take over' T1's clients from the troubled companies such as WorldCom or Qwest. We have learned a very interesting trick these companies will play on their customers. VERY OFTEN these T1's are not "PPP" T1's but "Frame Relay" T1s. These clients had been lead to believe they had ordered Full T1s, but they were given Frame Relay connections instead.
Let me explain the difference and why it can make a big difference in the performance you get.
A "PPP" T1, is a true dedicated data T1. The data link has a direct connection between two end points. There is no 'SWITCHING' in between your location, and the Host ISP. Using this mode, you will get a full 1.544 Mb/s between yourself and the Internet, assuming they are not over subscribed as someone pointed out already.
A "PPP" is higher performance because it is dedicated line for just your company and it is therefore more expensive.
A "Frame Relay" T1, uses shared data links between the two endpoints. The T1 loop is carried to a Frame Relay SWITCHING fabric. From there, your data will go through many switches between your location and the Internet where it will eventually get to the Internet. The basic point is your data link is shared and there will experience packet loss and latency on the trip from your office to the hosting company.
Frame Relay is a LOT cheaper because the lines are NOT dedicated and you share the 'ride'.
The latency difference can be vast. Our PPP T1s, have pings times of 1 to 3 ms. On Frame Relay connections you can expect to see 50 to 250 ms ping times. (This stuff matters if you play quick reflect games such as Counter Strike.) It also matters to business who attempt to do VoIP or streaming or other business applications.
It also matters when you get packet loss. With all the extra HOPS along the way through all the switches, you can sometimes get severe packet loss.
So these customers had order 'full T1's but got a shared cheaper frame relay connection instead.
The most deceiving act these large companies do is setup your CSU/DSU (your digital modem) with the 24 channels you would normally get with a real PPP T1. They then ban you from having access to your router, so you can not see how many channels have been configured on your side. It is also trivially easy to discover that you are running the Frame Relay protocol and not PPP.:) They ban you to prevent you from discovering the bait and switch the sales person performed on you.
Even worse, is that some of the clients permanent virtual circuit (PVC) is even more restricted. We have had some customers, get a 24 channel CSU/DSU setup (thinking they got a full T1) and we discover their Frame Relay circuit is only giving them 384 K or slower connection. They usually get very angry at this point.
So, after we have made the switch from their Frame Relay circuit to a non-oversubscribed PPP T1. The performance difference is night and day. The customers can not believe how much FASTER everything just became.
I am really not surprised that MS is resorting to bullying CTO's and technical buyers with PR like this because they lose on straight techinical merit.
For example, my Linux web servers run for many months on end with no problems. My home windows 98 box p3 866 from Dell with 384 Megs of RAM needs to be rebooted every 3 days. Its amazing how often I get this kind of message.
"System resources are low. Some programs may not run.
Windows has a limited number of system resources available. When you have many programs open, or you open a program that uses many system resources, Windows may run more slowly and some programs may not run properly.
Quit some programs to free up system resources, or restart your computer.
"
Imagine.. This never happens on my Linux Servers...
What is worse is that closing programs does not free up system resources.
Slashdot Mirror
If you thought the loss of supersonic air travel was a backward step, wait until you see what the loss of subsonic air travel will look like.
:)
Damm good point, you just depressed me
Isn't anyone bothered or surprised by the fact that the loss of supersonic flight [ala concorde] represented a backwards step in progress?
They had the concorde for such a long time and after its retirement nothing newer, faster and better was ready.
I can't think of another example of backward progress.
Google is tired of everyone learning what they are up to via domain name registerations.
Now, they will be able to register domain names for secret projects, and keep the domain names secret :)
The USB drive I use has been dropped quite a few times and still works perfectly! Who needs a tape backup or a flash device? These devices are fast and durable.
If I get another one of their drives, Ill get a Firewire version for the extra transfer speed.
Greg
I was Crispen on Batmud and could not agree with you more!
BatMud was so far ahead of its time. Batmud combat and leveling system from 1990 is more advanced that the Graphical muds of today.
The graphical muds are so simplistic and combat requires little or no team work. Batmud - you had to work together!
unless you were a necro.. but that was another story....
Cool to see a batmud reference - i havent played in year-- stopped after one of the conversions - but i wasted 2.5 years of my life to batmud!
I even made one of those text intro screens!
Performance and reliability benchmarks would be nice. I dont really care about adding in a RAID version as that dilutes the real comparison of a X vs Y vs Z type hard drives in head to head battle.
Anyone seen a report/analysis of this type?
We are a performance and reliability oriented web hosting company that uses exclusively SCSI hard drives for performance and reliability, but are wondering how close SATA is to SCSI for reliablity and performance.
Thanks
Greg
www.ZeroLag.com
As mentioned above by Zav, P2P will not work as a viable business solution for managed bandwidth. Companies need to absolutely guarantee that their data delivery will be intact and unaltered. P2P systems allow for Companies data to be altered in transit to the end person. This could have nasty side effects such as virus and Trojan horses being planted in the data.
The Company I work for has been providing highly burstable solutions for many years. We hosted all of the 20th Century Fox and Paramount Picture movies web sites for three years each. For example, we hosted the Titanic Movie, the most trafficked movie web site ever. Everyone had expected that movie to be a flop and when it was a huge hit, we had to have many extra megabits available to satisfy the millions of hits the site was getting.
The experience of hosting two previous Star Trek movie web sites was also very valuable. IBM would be running TV commercials featuring the Star Trek Movie for their Ecommerce solutions and the web site would be hammered with 10,000 accesses per second. As an interesting side note, this is when we found out that Apache and Linux on a $3,000 PC would outperform IRIX and Netscape Web Server on a $50,000 Silicon Graphics Server. We have been a primarily Linux shop ever since.
The knowledge and experience gained by hosting these web sites that needed to be ultra scalable is applied to all our current clients.
We offer both GB per month solutions and Megabit per second solutions. The comments posted above that GB per month is a better value is actually not always true. It will really depend upon your needs. ZeroLag Communications can provide solutions either way and we will show you which way your dollar would go further.
One specific technology we would offer to Companies like Zavâ(TM)s is compression. This has the effect of speeding up a web transfer and at the same time reducing the bandwidth. This is a win/win for both parties. Compression may not work in every situation, but when it does work, the effect is quite amazing on the users experience.
Another technology is an overly engineered network. Our capacity to deliver bandwidth far exceeds the needs of our clients. Most other companies offer the opposite solution or an oversubscribed network model. An oversubscribed network has many dropped packets which often adds extra retransmissions when you least want them, when you have bursting traffic. The person who posted above with ADSL described the problem perfectly. When not being able to send back an ACK successfully, this causes a retransmission. This means MORE bandwidth must be used to send the data and therefore further slows the download times and increases the Companies bandwidth costs!
ZeroLag on the other hand, never drops packets because our internal and edge networks are capable of transfering multiple Gigabits. Our top of the line Cisco Routers, Firewall and Switches are idle even during heavy traffic surges. This scalability is ideal for companies who are concerned about being able to burst.
One other advantage of going with a Company like ZeroLag is we can help your Company build out the servers it will need. We can help you build out a mission critical, fault tolerant, scaleable and secure server infrastructure. This way you can be driving 40 Mph today, jump to 150 Mph hour occasionally when needed and be able to go 220 Mph next year as the business builds.
Please feel free to contact me at ZeroLag Communications if you would like more information.
Thanks,
Greg Strelzoff
Greg at ZeroLag dot com
"We will, however, give the customer an MRTG graph to demonstrate usage on their line."
Wcom and Qwest and the BELL company in our area do NOT allow you to do this and/or do not give you the tools to do this. (They will not share the SNMP passwd.) Kudos to you and your company that you do.
Anyways, the customer always enjoyed finding out what they had gotten and how far apart it was from what they ordered!
I think the discussion of the local loops is not as important as the data connection type.
:) They ban you to prevent you from discovering the bait and switch the sales person performed on you.
We are in the Internet web hosting and T1 business, and we regularly 'take over' T1's clients from the troubled companies such as WorldCom or Qwest. We have learned a very interesting trick these companies will play on their customers. VERY OFTEN these T1's are not "PPP" T1's but "Frame Relay" T1s. These clients had been lead to believe they had ordered Full T1s, but they were given Frame Relay connections instead.
Let me explain the difference and why it can make a big difference in the performance you get.
A "PPP" T1, is a true dedicated data T1. The data link has a direct connection between two end points. There is no 'SWITCHING' in between your location, and the Host ISP. Using this mode, you will get a full 1.544 Mb/s between yourself and the Internet, assuming they are not over subscribed as someone pointed out already.
A "PPP" is higher performance because it is dedicated line for just your company and it is therefore more expensive.
A "Frame Relay" T1, uses shared data links between the two endpoints. The T1 loop
is carried to a Frame Relay SWITCHING fabric. From there, your data will go through many switches between your location and the Internet where it will eventually get to the Internet. The basic point is your data link is shared and there will experience packet loss and latency on the trip from your office to the hosting company.
Frame Relay is a LOT cheaper because the lines are NOT dedicated and you share the 'ride'.
The latency difference can be vast. Our PPP T1s, have pings times of 1 to 3 ms. On Frame Relay connections you can expect to see 50 to 250 ms ping times.
(This stuff matters if you play quick reflect games such as Counter Strike.)
It also matters to business who attempt to do VoIP or streaming or other
business applications.
It also matters when you get packet loss. With all the extra HOPS along the way through all the switches, you can sometimes get severe packet loss.
So these customers had order 'full T1's but got a shared cheaper frame relay connection instead.
The most deceiving act these large companies do is setup your CSU/DSU (your digital
modem) with the 24 channels you would normally get with a real PPP T1. They
then ban you from having access to your router, so you can not see how many channels have been configured on your side. It is also trivially easy to discover that you are running the Frame Relay protocol and not PPP.
Even worse, is that some of the clients permanent virtual circuit (PVC) is even more restricted. We have had some customers, get a 24 channel CSU/DSU setup (thinking they got a full T1) and we discover their Frame Relay circuit is only giving them 384 K or slower connection. They usually get very angry at this point.
So, after we have made the switch from their Frame Relay circuit to a non-oversubscribed PPP T1. The performance difference is night and day. The customers can not believe how much FASTER everything just became.
Most people, including myself, use Linux for mail,dns and web servers and MS for the desktop. Why did you switch to Linux for the Desktop?
Thanks for writing "The Iron Maiden" I have been waiting for this book for years
Greg
Didnt the Matrix show that humans could be batteries?
I am really not surprised that MS is resorting to bullying CTO's and technical buyers with PR like this because they lose on straight techinical merit.
For example, my Linux web servers run for many months on end with no problems. My home windows 98 box p3 866 from Dell with 384 Megs of RAM needs to be rebooted every 3 days. Its amazing how often I get this kind of message.
"System resources are low. Some programs may not run. Windows has a limited number of system resources available. When you have many programs open, or you open a program that uses many system resources, Windows may run more slowly and some programs may not run properly. Quit some programs to free up system resources, or restart your computer. "
Imagine.. This never happens on my Linux Servers...
What is worse is that closing programs does not free up system resources.
Now.. If only the games I played were on linux...