Author: spierzchala

I have set up a test to check the performance of the CoralCDN network against that of the origin server. You can view the comparative results here.

The tests used the base HTML document of this blog as the target.

The results so far indicate that there is a slight performance penalty when using CoralCDN in an ad hoc manner. They do offer continuous CDN services, and these likely provide better overall service under normal conditions.

However, it is likely that in situations where server load or traffic volumes increase substantially, the distributed performance system, even in an ad hoc manner, would save your bacon.

I will watch these tests over the next few days to see if any unique performance patterns appear.

Have I told you why I love my wife?

For Christmas, she bought me The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

Swooooonnn!

Oh, and there were some other presents as well.

Technorati Tags: Calvin+and+Hobbes, calvin, hobbes, calvin+hobbes

Stephen O’Grady points out this fine Maine business, seeking franchisees.

Opportunities to get in on this are going fast!

Technorati Tags: Maine, scary, general+store, Hussey’s, Windsor+ME

“Folks, Denver has cleared us for an IFR landing. Fasten your seat belts, and take another stiff drink.”

I love Winter!

Apparently there’s quite the blizzard pounding Colorado. [here and here]

And your point is…?

Remember:

1. You live at 3,000 ft and above
2. Those big rocky and pointy things in your backyard? They might have some effect on the weather
3. It’s Winter…well, officially tomorrow

I gew up in the Rocky Mountain Trench. After November 1st, it’s not if, it’s when the snow will come. And you can expect to be smacked hard at least once.

Get firewood. Get candles. Get books. Get pens and paper.

And be glad you don’t live in the Pacific Northwest.

Yes, I am still here.

Yes, I am swamped.

And yes, I haven’t had a creative thought in a week

Gonna make something of it?!?

I love the shirt.

It’s the four chins and obviously thinning hair I could do without.

Who is that guy????

Around the blogs, there are a number of folks talking about Skype making people pay for SkypeOut calls.

Guess what? Everywhere else in the world, you have always had to do this. So I don’t understand what the problem is.

I know that the QoS will improve on SkypeOut once the feeloaders are gone. Free is good, but you get what you pay for.

Those people who think free is a sustainable business model are either selling ads to pay the bills, or falling into the 1999 trap all over again.

Ok Skype hounds, this is is. Skype, in a move to get us North Americans (sorry Mexico) to use more Skype, is offering us unlimited calling to Canadian and American numbers (landlines and mobile) for all of 2007 for the ridiculously low price of $14.95 (offer valid until January 31, 2007).

Get it! Like you need a reason to resist Skype?

Oh, and of course all Skype-to-Skype calls are still free.

So, the question begs to be asked: why? Well, it seems that us dense folks on the non-European side of the Atlantic and the non-Asian side of the Pacific haven’t been adopting Skype fast enough.

A variety of theories abound about this. The one I have is that the US phone companies have priced long-distance so low that there is no motivator driving people away from their POTS connections.

The competition between the Telcos and the Cablecos over your phone service has been another factor in keeping long-distance costs so low.

It will be interesting to see which of the long-distance companies responds with a North American unlimited plan for a ridiculously low rate.

Technorati Tags: Skype, SkypeOut, unlimited+calling, voip, Telcos, Cablecos, long+distance, competition

My Google Alerts today picked up a post from a former colleague of mine, commenting on another post from the Yahoo! Interface blog.
I had some problems following the stream in the Performance Matters post, so I thought I would this post to clear up my thoughts.
A technical note up front: Using a waterfall chart that only shows non-persistent connections gives a very skewed view on how a modern Web page page performs. Persistent connections and modern TCP/IP stacks with fast-retransmit algorithms and window-scaling have seend a trend away from network-related performance issues in the recent past.
After the dot-bomb crash, the overabundance of bandwidth (in the form of over-built fiber-optic networks) made backbone and end-to-end connectivity issues for business and most home broadband users almost completely disappear.
The wealth of bandwidth (ok, North America consumers arethe poor cousins compared to their European and Asian counterparts) removed the veil of “it’s the network” which had been the crutch of performance engineers for many years, and exposed the effects of poor design and badly designed infrastructure.
In many cases, poor page design could be overcome. However, issues with core infrastructure and application design were (and are) notoriously difficult to resolve without spending a lot of money and investing a large amount of time and manpower.
So, when these issues were combined with the shrinking budgets and constricted IT staffing in the post-boom era, application performance issues became (and still are) the root-cause of most Web performance issues.
In recent months, as the use of Internet telephony, rich-media streaming, file-sharing, RSS, and SOA products rise nearly exponentially, the bandwidth crunch is starting to re-appear. This is something I first speculated about in October 2005 [here].
In one area, I do agree with the Performance Matters post: the larger the page, the slower download. However, the ongoing debate is one that pits the “more smaller” crown against the “fewer larger” crowd. The “fewer larger” crowd appears to be losing, given the design of most modern Web pages.
The only other comment I can fairly make here is that the majority of the sources cited in the Performance Matters post are 5-6 years old. In that time, I have learned a lot about Web performance, and that the post is more relevant to to the state of the Internet at that time, and not now.