From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Dec  2 18:30:49 1996
Return-Path: owner-hackers
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA00771
          for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 2 Dec 1996 18:30:49 -0800 (PST)
Received: from seagull.rtd.com (seagull.rtd.com [198.102.68.2])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA00760;
          Mon, 2 Dec 1996 18:30:44 -0800 (PST)
Received: (from dgy@localhost) by seagull.rtd.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id TAA05867; Mon, 2 Dec 1996 19:30:15 -0700 (MST)
From: Don Yuniskis <dgy@rtd.com>
Message-Id: <199612030230.TAA05867@seagull.rtd.com>
Subject: Re: TCP/IP bandwidth bragging
To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 1996 19:30:15 -0700 (MST)
Cc: davem@jenolan.rutgers.edu, dyson@freebsd.org, dennis@etinc.com,
        kpneal@pobox.com, hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <7184.849578160@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Dec 2, 96 05:56:00 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

It seems that Jordan K. Hubbard said:
> 
> > league", that is perfectly fine with me.  My response is, if it is so
> > bush leage, why is it so difficult for these systems to get better
> > numbers than Linux?  Stay down.
> 
> Which is a rather porous argument, to say the least.
> 
> Morons: "We've proven that our car goes much faster than the
> 	competition's does when we have all 4 doors open, due to the
> 	superior wind-resistance characteristics of our door design."
> 
> Competition:	"Why in god's name would you want to optimize for that?
> 		 Who in their right mind would drive with all the doors open?"
> 
> Morons:	"You're just jealous.  Beat our open-door numbers or shut up."
> 
> 
> Likewise, testing things like loopback vs actual transmission
> performance or no-load machine response is just as silly as optimizing
> for the corner case of driving with your doors open.  Who bloody
> *cares* what the results of a meaningless benchmark are, and why would
> you ever want to get "better numbers" in an area of trivial
> measurement where the only real result is to look better on some
> marketdroid's tally sheet, no doubt obfuscating the code in question
> and perhaps even degrading performance for the cases your users
> actually *do* care about.
> 
> Those tactics might sound good to Microsoft or (though I hope not)
> Linux, but the fact that many people use FreeBSD in *real world*
> situations where performance under extreme load (>1000 users) is
> paramount means that optimizing for these scenarios counts for far
> more than chasing some micro-benchmark, and this is what has led John
> to focus on specific types of performance over others.  We wouldn't
> have it any other way, and you tell me - which is better for us,
> making thousands of simultaneous TCP/IP connections work properly or
> shaving another microsecond off a meaningless latency benchmark?

(sigh)  It's *really* unfortunate that it would be a *monumentous*
task, but it would be amusing/entertaining/educational/informative
to switch ftp.cdrom.com over to a Linux (etc.) box for a day and
watch what happens!  :>  (Admittedly not a true apples<->apples
comparison...)

Just my $0.02
--don