From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Aug 20 02:24:40 1996 Return-Path: owner-chat Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id CAA12622 for chat-outgoing; Tue, 20 Aug 1996 02:24:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id CAA12616 for ; Tue, 20 Aug 1996 02:24:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eac.iafrica.com (196-7-192-169.iafrica.com [196.7.192.169]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with SMTP id CAA12166 for ; Tue, 20 Aug 1996 02:24:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from rnordier@localhost) by eac.iafrica.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id LAA01190 for chat@freebsd.org; Tue, 20 Aug 1996 11:20:33 +0200 From: Robert Nordier Message-Id: <199608200920.LAA01190@eac.iafrica.com> Subject: Re: Microsoft's overwhelmed FTP servers To: chat@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 11:20:31 +0200 (SAT) In-Reply-To: from "Tim Vanderhoek" at Aug 19, 96 10:03:54 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME8a] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Tim Vanderhoek wrote: > Okay, well here's some more figuring. > > The original post said each Microsoft machine served ~1100 requests per > hour. We'll give each request file as being 4.5MB. That's probably > overgenerous, but that's O. K. [...] Actually, the version of IE downloaded by default is nearly 8M. msie30m.exe 8057408 (already compressed) There are also a number of complementary packages, such as NetMeeting and Comic Chat, which users are encouraged to download during registration. Most of these are 1M plus. Since this is all free software, a 10M download session for many users is quite probable. Incidentally, the original estimate of ~1100 requests per hour was based on the number of users _registering_ the browser. Since users are taken to the registration pages only when IE is successfully installed, this doesn't take into account failed/aborted download attempts. And registration can be skipped. Downloading a 7.7M file with a Windows-based browser also tends to be error-prone for a variety of server-unrelated reasons. Beta versions of (not only) IE would quite frequently die in the attempt. (And lack 'reget' ability.) >From a marketing standpoint, I think MS would actually like to say, "Demand for IE has been overwhelming". (They are currently claiming in excess of one million copies of IE downloaded.) I'd certainly vote for FreeBSD over NT as an ftp server platform. But there is probably too much dubious information to establish anything much from the present case. -- Robert Nordier