Category: GrabPERF

GrabPERF: Blogwise Improves!

2005-11-16 / / 0 Comments

Blogwise had a slight server issue earlier this month. Sven, the great guy who runs the service, posted a very open statement of what happened.

I’m very sorry if you tried to access Blogwise over the last four days and got either no service, or an appallingly poor connection. It looks like there was a multiple server failure which, considering I only have a few, was quite damaging.

Events were made worse by my being out of the country at the time (ironically, my first break since Blogwise was started over three years ago). Although I had somebody monitoring the servers, and I knew fairly early that something was up, my lack of access to a computer and awkward time zones made fixing things extremely difficult.

The site should now be running again. If you had assumed Blogwise had closed suddenly, it hasn’t. I’m still here and as committed as ever – we just had the most unfortunate event at the worst possible time. This event has highlighted all sorts of vulnerabilities in the service, and has acted as a grim reminder of the need for redundancy and proper support.

It’s going to be tough to build a more reliable infrastructure, and to continue developing Blogwise. I don’t have the luxury of investors, nor a great deal of revenue from advertising, but the need to resolve this has been made painfully obvious and time and money will be found.

Finally, a thankyou to you all for your continued support, your patience and your understanding. With the site back up, I’m going to enjoy my last three days in Chicago and look forward to getting back into the flow of things this weekend.

Sven, 12 Nov 2005

On the upside, performance has improved dramatically!

Great work Sven…and I feel your pain.

Important GrabPERF Announcement

2005-09-20 / / 0 Comments

Over the next few weeks, you will begin to notice a change in GrabPERF. For those who visit us to examine the summary Search and News Index data, this data will continue to be openly published.

However, by the end of October 2005, all of the detail you have come to expect from GrabPERF will no longer be freely available.

Why am I doing this to a great free service? Am I just greedy?

Two years ago, I started this project as an experiment. Using my six years of Web performance experience, I started measuring sites and analyzing data that wasn’t interesting and profitable to my employer. In some short bursts over the last two years, I have sunk at least 3 months of time into developing the graphs, infrastructure, and systems that power GrabPERF

Lately, GrabPERF has attracted the attention of some folks that I truly admire and respect. Folks who value the service and have offered up great suggestions for improving the data that is collected. It is this attention that has lead me to realize that this service is worth something.

There are a number of reasons why I don’t just take off on my own.

  1. I am a “guest” of the USA
  2. I would be in conflict with my current employer
  3. Wife. Kids. Mortgage.
  4. My strengths are as an analyst, not as a developer
  5. My strengths are as an analyst, not as a entrepreneur

I am sure there are more, but that should be enough for this point in my life.

What is my goal by moving the meat of the data into a protected area?

  1. Pay to have GrabPERF hosted in a real co-location
  2. Purchase some new hardware for the GrabPERF System
  3. Defray some of the intellectual property costs associated with developing GrabPERF
  4. Defray some of the development cost of a number of very cool features that I have in mind
  5. And the one greedy thing: Daddy needs a Powerbook

As always, if you have a question or comment, drop me a note.

GrabPERF: Why EXPLAIN is such a useful SQL tool

2005-09-14 / / 0 Comments

Now, EXPLAIN seems like such an old school SQL tool. Well, I am here to explain why it’s not something you should ignore.

The Index Chart queries were all doing table scans. This can be pretty painful; ok, this can be stupid and EXTREMELY painful. The cause: I was setting sub-optimal date ranges on my queries and making all kinds of crazy date_format calls to format the dates IN THE QUERIES.

Once I changed the code, even when the query cache is cleared, the Index Charts now all run at less than 1 second.

Colour me stupid.

GrabPERF: Search Index Weekly Results (Aug 29-Sep 4, 2005)

2005-09-08 / / 0 Comments

The weekly GrabPERF Search Index Results are in. Sorry for the delay.
Week of August 29, 2005 – September 4, 2005

TEST                     RESULT  SUCCESS  ATTEMPTS
--------------------  ---------  -------  --------
PubSub - Search       0.4132426    99.95      5561
Google - Search       0.5546451   100.00      5570
MSN - Search          0.7807107    99.87      5572
Yahoo - Search        0.7996602    99.98      5571
eBay - Search         0.9371296   100.00      5571
Feedster - Search     1.1738754    99.96      5569
Newsgator - Search    1.2168921    99.96      5569
BlogLines - Search    1.2857559    99.71      5571
BestBuy.com - Search  1.4136253    99.98      5572
Blogdigger - Search   1.8896126    99.74      5462
BENCHMARK RESULTS     1.9096960    99.79     75419
Amazon - Search       1.9795655    99.84      3123
Technorati - Search   2.7727073    99.60      5566
IceRocket - Search    5.0256308    99.43      5571
Blogpulse - Search    6.5206247    98.98      5571

These results are based on data gathered from three remote measurement locations in North America. Each location takes a measurement approximately once every five minutes.

The measurements are for the base HTML document only. No images or referenced files are included.

GrabPERF: MSM/PR Agencies and my life

2005-08-29 / / 0 Comments

Well, it was bound to happen. Someone from a PR Agency asked if I was willing to go on the record today to discuss the GrabPERF results for the site they represent.

This exposes the critical weakness in my plan for world domination. I am, effectively, providing a low-octane sub-set of the information that my employer currently provides. I am using GrabPERF as a learning resource for myself, as well as for gathering some useful data that I know people are interested in.

I cannot comment on the data beyond the realm of my blog without overstepping the limited leeway allowed me by my employer. I am more than willing to provide documentation on the methodology, and provide raw data for publication purposes. But my position puts me in a very awkward position, and I refuse to find the edge of that cliff.

The people who use GrabPERF the most may or may not have the resources to purchase a commercial Web Performance Measurement service; that is not my call to make. If they do, I am completely comfortable analyzing the data and commenting on it as a representative of my employer.

And thanks for using GrabPERF!

To measure or not to measure; that is the question…

2004-12-23 / / 2 Comments

Remember how Comcast Re-IP’ed the entire neighbourhood this week? Well, I can measure the Sears hompage again. For those who don’t know the story, you can read more here.

The ethical question that I face is whether I should or not because I can. In the Web performance business, the companies that I work for have always held that if the site is public, then it can be measured, even if the site owner is not the one requesting the measurement (competitive benchmarking, public performance indices, etc.).

I am not going to burn the bridge with Sears at this point, but does anyone else have an opinion? How would your company react if it found itself being measure/monitored without it’s knowledge/consent?

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