From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Jun 16 16:55:14 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mail.rpi.edu (mail.rpi.edu [128.113.22.40]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E2B5F37B403 for ; Sat, 16 Jun 2001 16:54:59 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.acs.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by mail.rpi.edu (8.11.3/8.11.3) with ESMTP id f5GNsgB76962; Sat, 16 Jun 2001 19:54:42 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <01061618372500.00258@bandicoot.atlanta-bsd.org> References: <200106162031.f5GKVfm16209@saturn.cs.uml.edu> <20010616151848A.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> <01061618372500.00258@bandicoot.atlanta-bsd.org> Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 19:54:40 -0400 To: Brian Mitchell From: Garance A Drosihn Subject: Re: Article: Network performance by OS Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 6:37 PM -0400 6/16/01, Brian Mitchell wrote: >I'm not convinced there is any such thing as a fair benchmark, >nor am I convinced that benchmarks are valuable. Clearly the >benchmark cited is flawed, but what benchmark is not? I must admit I (personally) have a major ambivalence towards benchmarks. I want to see them, I'm always interested in reading them, and yet at the end of the day I almost never really believe anything they say... Well, some ones I believe, if there are very few significant variables between the things being benchmarked. Comparing PowerPC 603's to PowerPC 603e's, for instance. Once you get to anything where you're changing cpu's AND os's AND compilers AND hardware AND hw configurations AND OS configuration experience, AND AND AND... well, it's just hopeless. At best they give you some ideas of what should be done differently in "a follow-up benchmark", to maybe perhaps get a more valid comparison on that one. Not that I'll believe that one either, but I might at least think "it's a better comparison". -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message