[ale] News from the front: The O/S Wars Continue

[kaboom at gatech.edu (Chris Ricker)]

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Ryan Bridges wrote:

> Read this article.  It is not a rigged test but a true benchmark with
> arguments supporting their benchmarks.  Everyone should really read this.

I disagree that it's a "true benchmark."  It suffers from the same problem
the first one ultimately did (modulo mindcraft's incompetence in tuning
Linux ;-), which is that it has absolutely no correspondence to anything
like reality. No one wastes that kind of bandwidth on small static content.  
No one who can afford the bandwidth Linux would saturate with 4 100Mbit
cards would use 100Mbit instead of Gigabit.  The benchmark did absolutely
nothing to simulate real-world 'net traffic patterns (using NIST or such).
Etc.

It is useful in that it exposed problems that needed to be fixed, and I'm
glad that ZD has been presenting their writeups in that tone.  At the same
time, it's utterly worthless as a benchmark.  

later,
chris

-- 
Chris Ricker                                               kaboom at gatech.edu
                                              chris.ricker at genetics.utah.edu