I was awarded, successfully defended, and licensed a patent for what we now know as ¡°data push¡± over HTTP/HTTPS as part of a DARPA project (yes, you can thank/curse me for all of those annoying notifications).? An outgrowth of that was the concept of ¡°distributed information logistics services¡± (DILS - insert pickle joke here ¡ª><¡ª).
Various tools were developed to use the then-undefined Quality of Service (QoS) bits within IP packets (e.g., it hadn¡¯t been decided whether maximum quality should be 00000000 or 11111111).? There were very useful things that could be derived from QoS and other packet field values, particularly time of transmission, source and destination addresses, hop count, and so forth.
One of them was ¡°network distance¡±, where packet propagation time was not a function of simple straight-line or great circle route geometry.? It was defined by the ¡°goodput¡± (¡°throughput¡± minus packet losses) of packet routing paths and network router/switch processing speeds along those paths.
Access to the experimental ?DARPA-sponsored terabiit-per-second (Tbps) fiber-optic backbone in SillyCon Valley allowed me to snag the first Raspberry Pi delivered to the U.S. on March 22, 2012, ordered when first made available at 0600 GMT on February 29th of that year.? A backup order made at the same time over the commercial Internet of the time arrived ¡ in mid-August 2012!
There were over four million order attempts on that first day, and my backup order took three hours and 15 minutes to be successfully processed, while the order made over the Tbps backbone was completed within the first few minutes of availability.? I¡¯ve been a victim of these kinds of tech product ordering scrambles going back a very long time ¡ ?I guess being stranded here in Montana due to family obligations with double-digit below-zero F overnight lows, and Internet access via barbed-wire is the payback for my youthful Internet indiscretions!
It would be interesting if Hans could provide the subset of his order database that included the columns for order number, country code, postal code, time of order receipt, etc., so that an animation of the orders could be developed on a geographic plot over time.? For those not aware, there is a lot more network capacity (and hence goodput) available going East and West than there is North and South.
So, it¡¯s often faster to route packets to Europe from here in Montana via Seattle than going South to Salt Lake City or Denver, and then East.? Minneapolis would seem to make more sense than Seattle, but there isn¡¯t nearly as much capacity through there as there is through Seattle.? Some small storefront proprietorships with names something like Microsoft and Amazon apparently got in early on the Internet fad, and a lot of network capacity went to their doorsteps during the first decade of the WWW.
If you¡¯ve never played with the traceroute utility to track network packet hops between your QTH and distant single-IP-address servers, it can be quite revealing.? Going to sites that use Akamai-style server replication (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) aren¡¯t nearly as interesting because your journey could end at a replication server closest to you, very likely in the same data center from which your Internet service provider routes your packets, in metro areas.? Traceroute is also blocked by some ISPs and destination servers for ¡°security reasons¡±, so you may need to experiment to find ways to successfully overcome the Internet ¡°service¡± access for which you¡¯re paying more than small change.
Anywaaaay, I have to finish my lunch and get back to the farm chores, which includes being greeted by and feeding my ¡°adoring public¡±, consisting of up to 15 very hungry mousers (younger, more able critters visit multiple farms on various days to maximize menu opportunities).? They cleared the fields of the last rodents after the harvests razed the land to stubble back in October.? Besides, the rescued now-indoor kitten keeps taking control of the tablet touchscreen with seemingly-random paw swipes.
However, I¡¯ve noticed that any feline that gets the opportunity to dance on a keyboard or touchscreen, locks up the devices such that not even a power-cycle restores them to operation.? I¡¯m not into conspiracy theories, but in the case of cats, I¡¯m readily willing to make a huge exception (yes, I¡¯m more of a dog guy, having raised AKC champion black Labrador retrievers when I was a teenager).
