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Re: That MIT paper


From: Niels Bakker <niels=nanog () bakker net>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:35:36 +0200


David,

* dga () lcs mit edu (David G. Andersen) [Thu 12 Aug 2004, 02:55 CEST]:
Global impact is greatest when the resulting load changes are
concentrated in one place.  The most clear example of that is changes
that impact the root servers.  When a 1% increase in total traffic
is instead spread among hundreds of thousands of different, relatively
unloaded DNS servers, the impact on any one DNS server is minimal.
And since we're talking about a protocol that variously occupies less than
3% of all Internet traffic, the packet count / byte count impact is
negligible (unless it's concentrated, as happens at root and
gtld servers).

This doesn't make sense to me.  You're saying here that a 1% increase in
average traffic is a 1% average increase in traffic.  What's your point?

if a load change is concentrated in one place how can the impact be
global?

How can a 1% load increase in one specific place have anything but
minimal impact?

At root and gTLD servers I assume DNS traffic occupies significantly
more than 3% of all traffic there.  Still, a 1% increase remains 1%.


        -- Niels.


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