Re: Keynote/Boardwatch Internet Backbone Index A better test!!!

[sob () academ com (Stan Barber)]

> Personally, flaws or not, I welcome Boardwatch's attempts
> to come up with a widely-published metric for the
> Internet.  This likely will lead other publications into
> similar investigations, some of which may well bring the
> writers and editors of various periodicals into contact
> with the folks at CAIDA.

I agree that it is important that good, scientifically-sound metrics be 
widely-published. I hope that all such publicity in the future will
make reference to the work of CAIDA. From the information available 
thus far (to me at least), this metric does not appear to be 
scientifically-sound and the publicity does not reference the work of CAIDA.

> Also, flaws or not, Boardwatch did do something
> fantastically clever, and that's examining things on an
> end-to-end basis, rather than obsessing about details of
> what's going on between the endpoints.  People concerned
> about the abysmal end-to-end throughput of even modern TCP
> across much of the present Internet should be rejoicing
> and helping other journalists develop better and more
> scientific approaches to categorizing expected versus
> observed end-to-end performance.

I agree that end-to-end measurement is important. As I am certain
you are aware, there is work being done to build useful,
scientifically-sound ways of measuring end-to-end performance in which
the various factors affecting such performance can be described. This will
help everyone involved (consumers, engineers and marketers) more
effectively understand performance. The Keynote technique does little 
to break-down these factors. As others have pointed out, this is one
of its key flaws.



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Barber | URL- http://www.academ.com/academ |Opinions expressed are only mine.