Cloud Optimized Storage - EMC

"Existing storage technologies, however, were not designed to deliver cloud services, and so cloud service providers require a new category of storage that can address their requirements:

* Massive scalability — Providers must assemble applications and information from multiple sources to create unique experiences for the consumer.
* Global distribution — An information policy is necessary to enable the applications and information to move closer to the consumer.
* Efficiency at scale — Providers need an easy, cost-effective way to operate and manage massive amounts of unstructured information.

This new category of storage, Cloud Optimized Storage (COS), is a perfect complement to traditional storage categories."

EMC gives Centera a software refresh

EMC gives Centera a software refresh: "I heard from customers that the number of objects would become a bottleneck. Centera had the capability of ingesting a certain amount of objects per node, so if you had more than that, it became a performance issue. Even though it had enough bandwidth, processing capability and memory, the number of objects became a constriction."

How We Use The Internet? Key Findings of a Cisco Study

How We Use The Internet? Key Findings of a Cisco Study

Which Will Win? Connected Gadgets or a Connected You?

Which Will Win? Connected Gadgets or a Connected You?: "Novatel Wireless said this week that it will open up its MiFi router to developers who want to build applications for the popular gadget. This means tech companies can build software that will run on the credit card-sized Wi-Fi router that uses Verizon’s or Sprint’s 3G network as its backhaul to the Internet — and essentially turns a person into a walking Wi-Fi hotspot."

Pain at the Pipe: Latency Matters

Pain at the Pipe: Latency Matters: "The study notes that both latency and upstream speeds are going to become more important when it comes to measuring the quality of broadband connections over the next 3-5 years, and have subsequently changed its formulas to give both more weight."

performancewiki.com - monitoring disk io on aix, linux, windows, solaris

performancewiki.com - monitoring disk io on aix, linux, windows, solaris: "A couple of indicators must be monitored for hard disks in your system. Watch the Physical Disk (instance)\Disk Transfers/sec counter for each physical disk and if it goes above 25 disk I/Os per second then you've got poor response time for your disk. A bottleneck from a disk can significantly impact response time for applications running on your system, so you should investigate this further by tracking Physical Disk(instance)\% Idle Time, which measures the percent time that your hard disk is idle during the measurement interval, and if you see this counter fall below 20% then you've likely got read/write requests queuing up for your disk which is unable to service these requests in a timely fashion. In this case it's time to upgrade your hardware to use faster disks or scale out your application to better handle the load."

Technology Review: Faster File Flow

"In order to be smooth, which is what FastTCP does, you have to be more gentle and assess queuing delay," says Aleksandar Kuzmanovic, an associate professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University who researches TCP. By keeping the transfer from reaching the point of packet loss, he says, it's possible to avoid sending bursts of data, which can create a jittery effect for the recipient.

IPhone Users Love the Device, but Hate Its Slowness - NYTimes.com

IPhone Users Love the Device, but Hate Its Slowness - NYTimes.com

A Hired Gun for Microsoft in Dogged Pursuit of Google - NYTimes.com

A Hired Gun for Microsoft in Dogged Pursuit of Google - NYTimes.com

Do Enterprises Need a Toll Road to the Cloud?

Do Enterprises Need a Toll Road to the Cloud?: "Besides network performance and reliability, the two most often cited reasons I hear about why the enterprise is not adopting the cloud is 1) data portability (between the enterprise and clouds) and 2) security and logging around compliance."

Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0

Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0: "It’s a way to create the anti-cloud: Instead of accessing everything online either through downloads or streaming, you can store gobs of content on hard drives, and have relatively fast access to it with USB cables. That might be handy if strict data caps are implemented or you think you’ll be without broadband for a while."

USB 3.0 explained: How the next-generation USB will reach speeds of 4.8 Gbit/s

USB 3.0 explained: How the next-generation USB will reach speeds of 4.8 Gbit/s: "But there will be other, more subtle advantages as well, particularly on the architectural level: power efficiency will be greatly improved thanks to the introduction of an idle status; the need for polling will be eliminated thanks to a few protocol changes, which will in turn eliminate the time overhead needed by the host to establish the transfer rate to be used; and finally, USB 3.0 is also said to be highly scalable and ready for further transfer rate improvements in the next future."

iPhone File Browser/Explorer Quickly Transfers Files To/From iPhone

iPhone File Browser/Explorer Quickly Transfers Files To/From iPhone: "All you have to do is connect iPhone with your computer and start iPhone Explorer. There is a build-in option to edit a file, such as delete and rename. You can also create a new folder, by right-clicking anywhere and selecting New Folder. It works on the the principle of dragging and dropping, to copy a file to or from an iPhone simply drag & drop it to the desired location and it will start copying itself."

With LG Deal, Vudu Shifts Focus to Televisions - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

With LG Deal, Vudu Shifts Focus to Televisions - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: "The new Vudu service is entirely cloud-based and movies are streamed, not downloaded. The company says it has developed compression technology that allows even HD movies to start playing instantly on most broadband connections and lets users jump right to chapters, like a DVD. We look forward to road-testing that ourselves, although a demo this week, using a mocked-up Vudu box, worked as advertised."

Tips for Choosing the Right Performance-tracking Tool

Tips for Choosing the Right Performance-tracking Tool: "Recent studies show that on average, 20 percent of a page’s load time is spent on the back end as the server processes and generates HTML, while the remaining 80 percent is spent on the front end while the browser tries to load page assets and render the HTML. This rule applies to any size web site, whether it receives 100 or 1 million visitors a day. Keeping in mind this 20/80 rule, we at MySpace give as much attention to the front end behavior of our pages as our back-end systems."

Phoronix Test Suite - Linux Testing & Benchmarking Platform

Phoronix Test Suite - Linux Testing & Benchmarking Platform: "The Phoronix Test Suite is the most comprehensive testing and benchmarking platform available for the Linux operating system. This software is designed to effectively carry out both qualitative and quantitative benchmarks in a clean, reproducible, and easy-to-use manner. This software is based upon the extensive Linux benchmarking work and internal tools developed by Phoronix.com since 2004 along with input from leading tier-one computer hardware vendors. This software is open-source and licensed under the GNU GPLv3. The Phoronix Test Suite consists of a lightweight processing core (pts-core) with each benchmark consisting of an XML-based profile with related resource scripts. The process from the benchmark installation, to the actual benchmarking, to the parsing of important hardware and software components is heavily automated and completely repeatable, asking users only for confirmation of actions."

Super-fast Broadband Spreads Across Bay Area

Super-fast Broadband Spreads Across Bay Area: "Still, if you actually use this high-speed network too much, you’re going be penalized. Remember, Comcast is the chief proponent of metered broadband and imposes a 250 GB cap on the total data you can download over their network every month. Business customers can sign up for the Deluxe 50 Mbps/10 Mbps tier for $189.95/month. Comcast has also launched its WiMAX-based wireless data service in Atlanta, which uses the Clearwire network. Comcast, an investor in Clearwire, started selling wireless data services in Portland in June."

Jumbo frames: Yes

Jumbo frames: Yes: "So how large should an Ethernet frame be? Ethernet's 32-bit cyclic redundancy check is effective for detecting bit errors at frame sizes under 12,000 bytes, thereby drawing a logical upper limit. Within that, the optimum large frame size can be determined by an application's block size. For example, Network File System (NFS) transfers data in 8,192-byte blocks. So adding room for headers, an attractive maximum Ethernet frame size for NFS applications is 9,000 bytes."

RAMdisks, creating under FreeBSD 5.x - FreeBSDwiki

RAMdisks, creating under FreeBSD 5.x - FreeBSDwiki: "To use this script, you would type makeramdisk.sh start or makeramdisk.sh stop to create and mount, or dismount and delete, respectively, a 256MB RAMdisk on /dev/md10. (Note: the script as written depends on the prior existence of a directory at /mnt/ramdisk. If that directory does not exist, you're going to have problems.)

You should be able to figure out from the examples what you'd need to do different to change the size of the drive, where you mount it, etc."

Kernel Tuning - NICPB HEP Group

Kernel Tuning - NICPB HEP Group: "Though my understanding of what is somewhat clearer now based on three weeks of observations and hacking of the storage systems, I'm not quite sure how good or bad these settings can be for your system in some other situations. The systems which used to be able to live no more than 2-6 hours have been performing magnificiently for 6 days now (at the time of writing) doing a lot more transfers and having orders of magnitude smaller load (it actually remains less than number of cpu-s, which means the machines could do even more). So I personally am happy about these settings, but I must remind you, use these settings at your own risk."

Matt Mathis

Matt Mathis: "We want to explore the possibility of readjusting how the network and end-systems balance the responsibility for allocating network capacity. In particular we want to look at the use of some form of Fair Queuing or similar mechanisms in the network, combined with a change to TCP congestion control, to make it easier for the network to more accurately regulate the traffic. In the long run these changes would eliminate the need for the 'TCP-friendly' property which is currently required for all transport protocols. Although this might seem like a huge paradigm shift for the Internet, independent forces are already driving the most difficult part of these changes: the vast majority of end systems (home users with DSL, cable and FTTH service) are likely to already have their traffic managed by some form of Fair Queuing. We expect this trend to continue, and as a consequence, we believe that these changes can be deployed incrementally, on an as-needed basis.

We want to explore the merits of this paradigm change to identify and investigate areas that need additional research. Our goal is to introduce a compelling argument that the IETF should further relax its requirement that all protocols be TCP-friendly under all conditions. Even a minor weakening of the IETF position will facilitate the Internet evolving along this path."

The Web100 Project

The Web100 Project: "While the national high-performance network infrastructure has grown tremendously both in bandwidth and accessibility, it is still common for applications, hosts, researchers and other users to be unable to take full advantage of this new and improved infrastructure. Without expert attention from network engineers, users are unlikely to achieve even 10 Mbps single stream TCP transfers, despite the fact that the underlying network infrastructure can support data rates of 100Mbps or more. On unloaded networks, this poor performance can be attributed primarily to two factors: host system software (principally TCP) that is optimized for low bandwidth environments, and the lack of effective instrumentation and tools to diagnose performance issues."

Nissan Unveils IT System, iPhone App for New Networked Car

Nissan Unveils IT System, iPhone App for New Networked Car: "Using Nissan’s planned iPhone app, for example, drivers will be able to remotely monitor and control their vehicle’s battery charging, air conditioning and heating."

Stay Tuned for Bluetooth on Your TV

Stay Tuned for Bluetooth on Your TV: "Bluetooth on the TV gives consumers the ability to use their cell phones as a remote control, connect wireless headsets to the TV, and stream music from an iPod or other MP3 player to their television or speakers attached to their TV, all without a wire. A representative for the Bluetooth Special Interest Group expects to see more Bluetooth TVs coming to market later this year or early next year."

Virtualized I/O Takes Cloud Computing to the Next Level

Virtualized I/O Takes Cloud Computing to the Next Level: "The folks behind PrimaCloud, a cloud computing and storage product that offers a service-level agreement that it claims delivers 99.99 reliability (that means it can go down 53 minutes each year), said today it will save $1 million by virtualizing its network and will spend 50 percent less to deliver its high reliability cloud. The company has installed boxes from Xsigo Systems that sit between the servers and switches and create a cloud through which the network traffic from the virtual machines loaded on the servers is routed. The network can handle traffic destined for other servers or for the storage network without requiring separate cables."

Will P2P Soon Be the Scourge of Mobile Networks?

"What is most noticeable from the data gathered in this report is that subscribers are treating their mobile networks much the same as they treat their fixed networks. This is particularly true for heavy data users who seem to expect the same service from the Internet, irrespective of their access method."

Home Wireless Networks Aren’t Yet Ready for Video

Home Wireless Networks Aren’t Yet Ready for Video: "Wireless networks in their current form can’t support efforts by service providers trying to deliver video inside the home. That’s according to Joe Del Rio, a senior marketing manager at Broadcom with whom I chatted yesterday; he said service providers are still inclined to trust wired networking standards such as Home PNA or MoCA to deliver video and entertainment content around the home. Carriers are asking for between 30 Mbps and 36 Mbps, he said — enough to deliver three uncompressed HD video streams to televisions."

Documentation for /proc/sys/vm/*

"The files in this directory can be used to tune the operation of the virtual memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel and the writeout of dirty data to disk. Default values and initialization routines for most of these files can be found in mm/swap.c."

redhat.com | Choosing an I/O Scheduler for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and the 2.6 Kernel

redhat.com | Choosing an I/O Scheduler for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and the 2.6 Kernel: "The Linux kernel, the core of the operating system, is responsible for controlling disk access by using kernel I/O scheduling. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 with a 2.4 kernel base uses a single, robust, general purpose I/O elevator. The 2.4 I/O scheduler has a reasonable number of tuning options by controlling the amount of time a request remains in an I/O queue before being serviced using the elvtune command. While Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 offers most workloads excellent performance, it does not always provide the best I/O characteristics for the wide range of applications in use by Linux users these days. The I/O schedulers provided in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, embedded in the 2.6 kernel, have advanced the I/O capabilities of Linux significantly. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, applications can now optimize the kernel I/O at boot time, by selecting one of four different I/O schedulers to accommodate different I/O usage patterns..."

Compiling the Linux Kernel – CentOS 5.3 « Milton Paiva’s Weblog

XFS Filesystem performance tweaking on Linux « Kernel-Panik.com

4 1/2 Ways to Deal With Data During Cloudbursts

4 1/2 Ways to Deal With Data During Cloudbursts: "Cloudbursting is an approach to handling spikes in demand that overwhelm enterprise computing resources by acquiring additional resources from a cloud services provider. It’s a little like having unexpected houseguests and not enough beds for them to sleep in; some of them will have to be put up in a hotel. While such “peaking through the clouds” promises to maximize agility while minimizing cost, there’s the nagging question of what exactly to do about the data such distributed applications require or generate. There are several strategies for dealing with cloudbursts, each of which have different implications for cost, performance, and architecture. One of them may fit both your application’s unique requirements and your enterprise’s overall business model."

Changing the World With Open Translation

Changing the World With Open Translation: "While there are some pretty nifty machine-based language tools out there, no machine will ever trump human translation. Machine-based tools are fine for simple greetings and pleasantries. However, only human translators can help us understand the political and cultural nuances inherent in foreign texts. This is important on two accounts. Firstly, rather than bouncing ideas off a culturally insular echo-chamber, we have a chance to learn from others with distinctly different view points. And secondly, for the first time ever, world history moves from being a confined regional fact to an evolving and diverse discussion.

Human translation lets us address collective global issues while also seeing the negative and positive impact of our choices. For this reason a number of groups have come forward to produce open translation (or crowd sourced translation) projects. Here are just a few of those efforts:"

The Hidden Cost of the Cloud: Bandwidth Charges

The Hidden Cost of the Cloud: Bandwidth Charges: "The trick will be moving your application from the cloud to your own infrastructure and dedicated bandwidth and then finding the expertise to manage this environment. Cloud service providers are counting on that being a difficult trick to perform."

Racing to 100 GB: Alcatel-Lucent Boosts Speeds on Routers, Switches

Racing to 100 GB: Alcatel-Lucent Boosts Speeds on Routers, Switches: "The explosion of online video and the rising tide of all kinds of data are only going to put more demands on our networking infrastructure — 100 GB is seen as a way to meet that growing need."

HP Buys IBRIX to Keep Up With Storage Trends

HP Buys IBRIX to Keep Up With Storage Trends: "This scale-out network-attached storage (NAS) file software had to provide access to millions of files, with, for example, more than 17 million in a single rendering working set. In the event, the parallelised file serving software enabled DreamWorks’ artists to do things up to five times faster."

Op-Ed Contributor - Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and Me - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and Me - NYTimes.com: "Maybe they’ll leave for the startup that finally topples Microsoft ... or Google. But until then these companies will posture, spend a little money on research and development, and keep each other in check, while reporters and publications pretend that it matters."

BlazeBand

BlazeBand: "Blazeband provides an alternative which overcomes these limitations of TCP. Blazeband utilizes UDP for bulk packet delivery. UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is the standard mechanism for delivering packet-based data over IP networks. UDP does not provide mechanisms for bandwidth control or reliability, but UDP packets can be sent very quickly. Blazeband protocols provide bandwidth and congestion control through UDP messages, using intelligent algorithms which distinguish congestion losses from other types of packet losses. These algorithms prevent Blazeband bandwidth utilization from dropping off in the presence of occasional packet loss.

Blazeband achieves reliability through the use of KenCast's (patented, other patents pending) Fazzt Forward Error Correction (Fazzt FEC®) technology, Validation algorithm, and Missed Packet Collector algorithms."

Download files to the iPhone with new plugin (how-to guide) | iPhone Atlas - CNET Reviews

Download files to the iPhone with new plugin (how-to guide) | iPhone Atlas - CNET Reviews: "By default, the iPhone can access and play MP3, QuickTime, PDF and other files, but cannot store them for later use. This new plug-in makes it possible."

iPhone 3GS limited to 384 Kbps upstream | Phones | iPhone Central | Macworld

iPhone 3GS limited to 384 Kbps upstream | Phones | iPhone Central | Macworld: "On the downstream side, all is well. The iPhone 3G handles up to 3.6 Mbps HSDPA, and the 3GS can use the newer 7.2 Mbps HSDPA flavor. AT&T is building out the 7.2 Mbps service, which will start being available in some metropolitan areas later this year."

Online Backups Could Use Google’s Expertise - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Online Backups Could Use Google’s Expertise - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: "Backup in general is an essential technology which is not keeping up with demand,” said Garth Gibson, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the world’s top storage experts. “It’s not keeping up in the home, in the small office or the large office."

Should We Force Marriage Between Broadband and Power Cos?

Should We Force Marriage Between Broadband and Power Cos?: "After reading about innovation in Germany where an electric company uses a customer’s broadband connection to help deliver intelligence about power use, I called my local utility, Austin Energy, which is considered an innovator in green energy. I wanted to find out how broadband and utility companies would deliver such services without using the same network, and why Austin Energy isn’t eager for any marriage of networks."

Google Freebie Puts School System in the Apps Cloud - NYTimes.com

Google Freebie Puts School System in the Apps Cloud - NYTimes.com: "Google Apps Education Edition is expected to remain free into the foreseeable future, Swidler says. The Google Message Discovery service, in which Google provides up to 10 years of e-mail retention, costs $11 per user per year for education, a discount off the Business Edition price."

Bandwidth chart | web.forret.com

Bandwidth chart | web.forret.com: "This is a list of standard or common bandwidths. Clicking on one will bring you to the Bandwidth calculator, who will translate the speed into Mbps, MB/s, GB/month, ..."

Singing A New Tune: The Imeem Music Store.

Singing A New Tune: The Imeem Music Store.: "Apple used music as low-margin bait to sell high-margin iPods and computers. Now imeem is going back to 2002? What’s that quote about those who don’t know history being doomed to repeat it?"

Aspera: Today Super-Fast Video File Transfers for the Media Industry. Tomorrow Super-Fast Video Downloads for Consumers?

Aspera: Today Super-Fast Video File Transfers for the Media Industry. Tomorrow Super-Fast Video Downloads for Consumers?: "When the company was started 5 years ago, Aspera's co-founders' premise was that the traditional approach for moving files, primarily by using FTP ('File Transfer Protocol'), was inherently inefficient because it was optimized for text and used TCP, the underlying protocol that most Internet traffic relies on. Rather than trying to improve FTP or TCP as others have done, they instead designed their own protocol called 'fasp' (Fast and Secure Access Protocol). By installing Aspera's fasp software at the file's send and receive points, large files can be sent over existing network infrastructure. fasp can send files 10 to 100s of times faster than FTP (there are charts here that show Aspera's tests)."

America’s Secret Innovation Weapon - Immigration - NYTimes.com

America’s Secret Innovation Weapon - Immigration - NYTimes.com: "Immigrants come to the United States and take menial jobs so that their children have a chance at a better future, he told me. While the jobs they take are below their intrinsic capabilities, they’re focused on giving their children a better life, not personal job satisfaction. Second-generation children, seeing how hard their parents work to give them an opportunity, in turn work hard at school, where, he noted, they often focus on mathematics and science in pursuit of the economic returns promised by careers in engineering and medicine. Third-generation kids figure the economic return on effort expended is better for business and legal professionals and pursue those professions instead of technical ones. By the fourth generation, any immigration-related incentives to work hard are largely nonexistent."

Google's Next Target - Unified Communications - NYTimes.com

Google's Next Target - Unified Communications - NYTimes.com: "If a Google Voice service, to link all your phones to one number with a variety of add-ons such as turning voice mail into text, can be offered to millions of users for free, isn't it likely to also be used by workers?"

Review - Firefox 3.5 Makes Browsing Faster, Easier and More Fun - NYTimes.com

Review - Firefox 3.5 Makes Browsing Faster, Easier and More Fun - NYTimes.com: "For many people, the browser wars are all about one thing: speed. There's no doubt that version 3.5 of Firefox is significantly faster than version 3. Pages load noticeably more quickly for a number of reasons, not least because Mozilla built a new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey for this version of Firefox."

Akamai to Make iPhone Video Streaming Smooth

Akamai to Make iPhone Video Streaming Smooth: "Adaptive streaming adjusts the video content to a lower or higher bit rate, depending on how robust the web connection is. Akamai offers a similar service for Microsoft’s Silverlight for video on PCs. Adobe Flash and Move Networks also offer adaptive bit-rate streaming, although Adobe uses a proprietary method that requires special servers."

New version of OffiSync brings more Google into Microsoft Office | VentureBeat

New version of OffiSync brings more Google into Microsoft Office | VentureBeat: "OffiSync has already gotten positive press for its integration of online word processor Google Docs with Microsoft Word. The Seattle company is taking that integration further with the now-available version 2, by adding Google web search and image search."

Comcast Starts Selling Wireless Broadband Service

Comcast Starts Selling Wireless Broadband Service: "Consumers can pay $69.99 a month for a “fast pack” national offering that buys them unlimited wireless data and a 12 Mbps home broadband offering. A metro-only service will cost $49.99 a month."

Cloud Is Internet's Next Generation, HP Executive Says - NYTimes.com

Cloud Is Internet's Next Generation, HP Executive Says - NYTimes.com: "The panelists named solid-state drives, scalable data stores and emerging programming languages such as Rails as the biggest technologies that will keep driving this forward."

And the Winner of the $1 Million Netflix Prize (Probably) Is … - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

And the Winner of the $1 Million Netflix Prize (Probably) Is … - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: "On Friday, a coalition of four teams calling itself BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos — made up of statisticians, machine learning experts and computer engineers from America, Austria, Canada and Israel — declared that it has produced a program that improves the accuracy of the predictions by 10.05 percent."

Acer’s Everywhere in the PC World - NYTimes.com

Acer’s Everywhere in the PC World - NYTimes.com: "I think we have the know-how, and these two worlds are going to merge"

Filesystem performance tweaking with XFS on Linux@Everything2.com

Filesystem performance tweaking with XFS on Linux@Everything2.com: "the filesystem is specifically optimized for high performance with massive files, and can theoretically scale to handle a maximum file size of 9 million terabytes."

Werner Vogels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Werner Vogels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Vogels maintains a technology oriented weblog named “All Things Distributed” which he started in 2001 while he was still a scientist at Cornell[2]. It was mainly used to discuss early results of his research. After he joined Amazon.com the nature of the weblog changed to more product oriented with some general technology and industry writings."

tiobench benchmark

tiobench benchmark: "tiobench is a multi-threaded I/O benchmark. It is used to measure file system performance in four basic operations: sequential read, random read, sequential write, and random write."

SanDisk Unveils World's Fastest (Class 10) 32GB SDHC Card | Digital Camera Review

SanDisk Unveils World's Fastest (Class 10) 32GB SDHC Card | Digital Camera Review: "Our card’s 32GB of storage and up to 30MB/s read & write speeds enable DSLR users to shoot without worrying about storage or speed limitations. SanDisk Extreme SDHC cards provide consumers with a more enjoyable user experience, letting them focus on what is really important – the images that they are capturing."

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s notebook - Reviews - Hardware - Notebooks - Performance Notebooks - PC World

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s notebook - Reviews - Hardware - Notebooks - Performance Notebooks - PC World: "A big reason for the notebook's impressive performance is the Toshiba solid-state drive (model number THNS128GG4BAAA-N), which recorded a speed of 70.6 megabytes per second in our file transfer tests. This is a stunning result for a laptop storage device and it means that disk-intensive tasks, such as file compression, decompression and file searches, will be quicker than average. (The average transfer rate for a laptop storage device is 20-30MBps.)"

Let's make the web faster - Google Code

Let's make the web faster - Google Code: "What would be possible if browsing the web was as fast as turning the pages of a magazine? We invite you to join us in exploring and innovating across the entire spectrum of performance - from Internet protocols to the browser to website development. Together, let's make the web faster!"

Let's make the web faster - Google Code

Let's make the web faster - Google Code: "How gzip compression works"

Google Wants to Make the Web Faster, Debuts Speed (Not the Drug, the Developer Site)

Google Wants to Make the Web Faster, Debuts Speed (Not the Drug, the Developer Site): "changes, enhancements, or even alternatives' to the current standards and protocols that make up the architecture of the web."

Thinking About Upgrading to IE8? Think Twice - NYTimes.com

Thinking About Upgrading to IE8? Think Twice - NYTimes.com: "Because although IE8 is probably more secure than any other version of IE ever produced, it's even more secure to not use IE at all."

Netcom and Huawei unveil latest LTE network trial developments: CommsUpdate : TeleGeography Research

Netcom and Huawei unveil latest LTE network trial developments: CommsUpdate : TeleGeography Research: "Netcom, the Norwegian mobile subsidiary of TeliaSonera, and Chinese vendor Huawei completed tests of services including Video on Demand (VoD), file transfer protocol (FTP), web surfing, video conferencing and video telephony over the LTE network, which is able to deliver peak data download rates of 150Mbps."

Use cases make the case for cloud storage

Use cases make the case for cloud storage: "Previous attempts at remote storage clearly suffered from latency issues. Similarly, the nature of the Internet could easily wreak havoc on the availability of a service. The breakthrough in the latest generation of cloud storage revolves around caching at the client or within a local appliance that effectively masks Internet latencies, while keeping copies of the most heavily-used data local. By caching locally, these appliances can mitigate the impact of even extended network outages, but just as importantly, can also make remote storage for frequently-used data seem just as responsive as local storage. With a local NAS gateway, storage in the cloud can even mimic the availability, performance, and appearance of mid-range NAS appliances, while being protected at the remote end with a level of assurance that few businesses can hope to achieve on their own. The remaining caveat around performance is that these solutions may consume too much Internet bandwidth when data change rates are too great, and this may cause your cloud storage solution to incur hidden costs. Yet even here, vendors will continue to innovate on capacity optimization and WAN optimization to reduce data transmission."

Transcend releases 2.5-inch SATA SSD with DRAM cache | Computer Technology Review - Data Storage and Network Solutions

Transcend releases 2.5-inch SATA SSD with DRAM cache | Computer Technology Review - Data Storage and Network Solutions: "Built on Transcend’s solid-state technology, the SSD25D outperforms standard 2.5-inch hard drives, delivering sustained transfer speeds of up to 230 MB/s (megabytes-per-second) read and 180 MB/s write to guarantee high throughput, regardless of file size or type."

Defogging the Cloud in IT - NYTimes.com

Defogging the Cloud in IT - NYTimes.com: "Another word for a low-hanging cloud is fog. I think that pretty accurately describes where the IT industry is when it comes to the cloud. Everyone has a different definition. Some further confuse the situation by using cloud as a new label on old technologies."

Sony CEO Stringer: It’s the Network, Stupid

Sony CEO Stringer: It’s the Network, Stupid: "Stringer is recognizing the truth that all tech companies need to embrace, that mobility and connectivity are changing what consumers can do with devices and subsequently, what they expect from them. Intel gets it, which is why it built its line of low-power Atom chips to power connected mobile gadgets. Microsoft is lagging, as it waffles on what to charge for Windows on netbooks, and decides not to port Windows 7 to ARM chips that may beat out Intel for powering mobile computers."

Turn Your iPhone Photos Into Postcards With HazelMail

Turn Your iPhone Photos Into Postcards With HazelMail: "So I decided to try HazelMail, a new, free iPhone application that turns your iPhone photos into personalized postcards and even mails them for you, too. My verdict: It’s a fun and easy — but you might get home before your postcard reaches its destination."

Linux.com :: Inspecting disk IO performance with fio

Linux.com :: Inspecting disk IO performance with fio: "The hdparm tool isn't the best indicator of real-world performance. It operates at a very low level; once you place a filesystem onto a disk partition you might get significantly different results. You will also see large differences in speed between sequential access and random access. It would also be good to be able to benchmark a filesystem stored on a group of disks in a RAID configuration.

fio was created to allow benchmarking specific disk IO workloads. It can issue its IO requests using one of many synchronous and asynchronous IO APIs, and can also use various APIs which allow many IO requests to be issued with a single API call. You can also tune how large the files fio uses are, at what offsets in those files IO is to happen at, how much delay if any there is between issuing IO requests, and what if any filesystem sync calls are issued between each IO request. A sync call tells the operating system to make sure that any information that is cached in memory has been saved to disk and can thus introduce a significant delay. The options to fio allow you to issue very precisely defined IO patterns and see how long it takes your disk subsystem to complete these tasks."

Image Recognition Startup SnapTell Acquired by Amazon Subsidiary A9.com

Image Recognition Startup SnapTell Acquired by Amazon Subsidiary A9.com: "SnapTell’s visual product search technology lets users take a photo of the cover of any CD, DVD, book, or video game, and the technology will automatically identify the product and find ratings and pricing information online from Google, Amazon, eBay and more. The company has a database of about 5 million+ products. SnapTell launched popular apps for both the iPhone and Android."

Layar Could Be the Future of "Augmented Reality" (Video)

Layar Could Be the Future of "Augmented Reality" (Video): "Called Layar, the app is a platform that makes sets of data viewable on top of the viewfinder of your mobile phone as you pan around a city and point at buildings. Real estate, banking and restaurant search companies have already created layers of information available on the platform, which is limited to use in the Netherlands for now."

eyeOS - Cloud Computing Operating System | Web Desktop - Web OS - Web Office - your files and applications everywhere

eyeOS - Cloud Computing Operating System | Web Desktop - Web OS - Web Office - your files and applications everywhere: "The idea of eyeOS is to create a free, open source (AGPLv3) product easy to install on a web server so you will have your own cloud system under your control. You can also participate in a great community of users and developers, able to create your own apps. Welcome to the eyeOS project."

I.B.M. Looks to Sell Big Business on Cloud Computing - NYTimes.com

I.B.M. Looks to Sell Big Business on Cloud Computing - NYTimes.com: "“The information technology infrastructure is under stress already, and the data flood is just accelerating,” said Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.’s chief executive. “We’ve decided that how you solve that starts by organizing technology around the workload.”"

IBM to bring cloud computing (whatever that means) to big business | VentureBeat

IBM to bring cloud computing (whatever that means) to big business | VentureBeat: "For now, the company says its “Smart Business cloud portfolio” focuses on two areas. First, it offers allows companies to develop and test software using infrastructure built or operated by IBM, which allows for more efficient use of hardware while keeping the software secure behind a corporate firewall. Second, it’s offering virtualized desktops where, again, the computing takes place on IBM’s infrastructure and is accessed remotely by the company’s employees."

Take Your Sites to the Cloud (for Free) With Force.com - NYTimes.com

Take Your Sites to the Cloud (for Free) With Force.com - NYTimes.com: "The new offering from this 'platform as a service' allows anyone to easily build a fully-featured website using the very same cloud infrastructure it has provided for applications. In other words, a comprehensive website can now be created through Force.com, and literally all you need do is design your UI with web standards such as HTML, JavaScript, Flex and CSS."

Most Popular FTP Clients - Best FTP Softwares | Softwares and Learning of Encyclopedia

Most Popular FTP Clients - Best FTP Softwares | Softwares and Learning of Encyclopedia: "Whether you do your work on the web, manage a wordpress blog, run a home FTP server, or you just prefer a quick download from time to time, a solid, full-featured FTP client can be a lifesaver. Here are 3 of the most popular ftp client softwares you can use to manage your file uploads and downloads."

Social Game Company Zynga Says It’s Not Planning for IPO - NYTimes.com

Social Game Company Zynga Says It’s Not Planning for IPO - NYTimes.com: "Zynga spends millions per month advertising for its games, and it has more than 250 employees; The source concludes it barely makes a profit even on its revenues. That’s possible, but as I’ve covered, it is advertising its games with ad networks like RockYou’s, for the same reason that everyone else advertises. The cost of advertisements are more than paid for by revenue — in this case through virtual goods in Zynga games like Texas Hold ‘Em. In terms of employee count and cost, it is a startup — startups try to maximize growth over profit because they are trying to become big businesses."

What Intel Can Teach Google About the Cloud

What Intel Can Teach Google About the Cloud: "So what did Intel and AMD do when faced with the same problem? They looked for a fix they could apply quickly. The quick fix was to add a cache to the processor, which allowed the CPU to run at full speed and store results in temporary memory until they could move across the slower system bus. It also allowed them to keep selling faster processors while they tackled the longer-term project of improving standards for bus speeds."

Blue Coat Named WAN Optimization Market Leader by Infonetics

Blue Coat Named WAN Optimization Market Leader by Infonetics: "The unique combination of visibility, acceleration and security offered by our ProxySG appliances provides the technological innovation and differentiation that has propelled Blue Coat to the leader in the WAN optimization market."

GLADINET - Deliver Cloud Services onto Desktop

GLADINET - Deliver Cloud Services onto Desktop: "Gladinet Cloud Desktop mounts cloud storage as local folders and integrates online applications with the local desktop. It is a personal cloud agent, an open online backup platform, and a desktop delivery agent for cloud service providers."

2008-03_De-duplication.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Stop Repeating Yourself:
De-duplication Why and How

2008-03_De-duplication.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Linux.com :: Benchmarking NFSv3 vs. NFSv4 file operation performance

Linux.com :: Benchmarking NFSv3 vs. NFSv4 file operation performance: "By far the largest speed gains come from running with the async option on, though using this can lead to issues if the NFS server crashes or is rebooted."

NetEx Announces Cloud Data Transport Solution - 6/12/2009 9:47:00 AM - Graphic Arts Online

NetEx Announces Cloud Data Transport Solution - 6/12/2009 9:47:00 AM - Graphic Arts Online: "The appealing value proposition of cloud storage rapidly disappears if customers can't recover data on a timely basis during a disaster recovery operation"

Cloud Storage Could Mean Fat Pipes For All

Cloud Storage Could Mean Fat Pipes For All: "f one assumes a corporate employee generates 3-5 MB of data per day, once you get over 300 employees sending their files to offsite cloud storage for backup, the T1 is tapped out. Over one of the fasted telcommunications options, an OC-48 line with speeds of about 2.5 Gbps, it will still take about an hour to send 1 TB of data."

Amazon’s New Service Goes Postal Over Slow Broadband

Amazon’s New Service Goes Postal Over Slow Broadband: "No matter how much we have improved our network throughput in the past 10 years, our datasets have grown faster, and this is likely to be a pattern that will only accelerate in the coming years. While network may improve another other of magnitude in throughput, it is certain that data sets will grow two or more orders of magnitude in the same period of time."

Parascale

Parascale: "What essentially they have developed is software that gets commodity storage drives attached to plain vanilla low cost servers to behave like a giant cloud of storage space, which can be used (and managed) using protocols such as HTTP, FTP and NFS. The company describes its approach as virtual storage grid."

FDT – Fast Data Transfer

thomas_Tutorial-FDT_1610-1710.pdf (application/pdf Object)

A Question about P2P Technologies « blog maverick

A Question about P2P Technologies « blog maverick: "The premise of the technically is to break up files into pieces and distribute those pieces on to the PCs of end users who have downloaded the BitTorrent type client. Then when a user requests the file to be delivered or streamed to them, rather than having to go to a host server, a tracker determines where all the file pieces are, and defines how the user reassembles them into a copy of the original on his or her computer as a file or a stream.

Thats the very, very simplific explanation of how it works."

Attn Steve Jobs: Red Swoosh P2P Service Wants To Save You $15 Million

Attn Steve Jobs: Red Swoosh P2P Service Wants To Save You $15 Million: "Bandwidth is a bottleneck. That didn't matter to much when we were just sending and receiving pictures and music, but video is going to break the camel's back."

Attn Steve Jobs: Red Swoosh P2P Service Wants To Save You $15 Million

Attn Steve Jobs: Red Swoosh P2P Service Wants To Save You $15 Million: "Bandwidth is a bottleneck. That didn't matter to much when we were just sending and receiving pictures and music, but video is going to break the camel's back."

Filesystems comparison using iozone

Filesystems comparison using iozone:

"Write (write):

This test measures the performance of writing a new file. When a new file is written not only does the data need to be stored but also the overhead information for keeping track of where the data is located on the storage media. This overhead is called the metadata It consists of the directory information, the space allocation and any other data associated with a file that is not part of the data contained in the file. It is normal for the initial write performance to be lower than the performance of rewriting a file due to this overhead information."

Terabyte,Petabyte,Exabyte,Zettabyte,Yottabyte

Terabyte,Petabyte,Exabyte,Zettabyte,Yottabyte: "After Terabyte comes a Petabyte then Exabyte then Zettabyte then Yottabyte"

iSGTW Feature - GridFTP moves your data and your news

iSGTW Feature - GridFTP moves your data and your news: "GridFTP supports coordinated data transfer using multiple computer nodes at both the source and destination, adding another order of magnitude improvement in performance for network links that support much higher data rates than individual nodes at either end. With this feature, GridFTP has delivered over 25 Gb/s on a 30 Gb/s TeraGrid link using 32 nodes at both ends."

Onehub • Virtual workspaces for online collaboration and file sharing

Onehub • Virtual workspaces for online collaboration and file sharing: "Workspaces for team collaboration & file sharing --- With Onehub you create virtual workspaces called Hubs to share information, documents, and files more easily. You can choose from the many Onehub Widgets to help you organize and manage your projects. Your team will benefit from having information in a central location so they can work smarter and be more productive than ever."

Show Student Project

Show Student Project: "characterize the performance of Globus GridFTP transfers over both TCP and UDT protocols for hosts connected at 10Gb/s over a wide area network, and compare the performance of GridFTP using each. Standard disk-to-disk GridFTP transfers will be tested, as well as memory-to-memory transfers. Characterization will include detailed measurements regarding the speed and latency involved in the transfers, as well as resource utilization at the source and destination hosts."

Fast Data Transfer

Fast Data Transfer: "FDT can be used to stream a large set of files across the network, so that a large dataset composed of thousands of files can be sent or received at full speed, without the network transfer restarting between files."

Rox Java NIO Tutorial

Rox Java NIO Tutorial

Comcast Media Center’s AdDelivery Looks to Remove Tape Delays - NYTimes.com

Comcast Media Center’s AdDelivery Looks to Remove Tape Delays - NYTimes.com

Intel Buys Wind River, a Software Maker, to Expand Its Reach - NYTimes.com

Intel Buys Wind River, a Software Maker, to Expand Its Reach - NYTimes.com

I.B.M. Unveils Software to Find Trends in Vast Data Sets - NYTimes.com

I.B.M. Unveils Software to Find Trends in Vast Data Sets - NYTimes.com: "Steven A. Mills, I.B.M.’s senior vice president for software, notes that financial companies have spent years trying to gain trading edges by sorting through various sets of information. “The challenge in that industry has not been ‘Could you collect all the data?’ but ‘Could you collect it all together and analyze it in real time?’ ” Mr. Mills said."

Microsoft and HP Team Up to Take on Cisco - NYTimes.com

Microsoft and HP Team Up to Take on Cisco - NYTimes.com: "Cisco has its eye on the collaboration market, which it believes will be worth $34 billion in the coming years. Google is also pushing into this space with its Google Apps and other enterprise efforts. But Microsoft isn’t going to sit still while interlopers try to infringe on its business. And with Cisco releasing its own line of servers, HP’s decision to buddy up with Microsoft makes sense."

Tarari Content Processor, Content Inspection & Deep Packet Inspection : LSI

Tarari Content Processor, Content Inspection & Deep Packet Inspection : LSI

L.S.I. Sees Money in the Storage Shadowlands - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

L.S.I. Sees Money in the Storage Shadowlands - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: "As a result, Mr. Talwalkar argues that large storage companies will opt to spend less time designing their own hardware and more time on creating unique software tools and other features that gives their products an edge over rivals. If such a scenario plays out, a neutral hardware maker like L.S.I. could make gains by building a larger portion of the storage systems sold by large hardware companies."

Digital Domain - Just Browsing? A Web Store May Follow You Out the Door - NYTimes.com

Digital Domain - Just Browsing? A Web Store May Follow You Out the Door - NYTimes.com: "IF you try on a sweater in a department store dressing room, but choose not to buy it, a persistent sales clerk won’t pursue you into the street yelling, “Hey, are you sure?” Nor will you receive a call at your home the next day to check again if you want to complete the purchase."

Corner Office - Meetings, Version 2.0, at Microsoft - Question - NYTimes.com

Corner Office - Meetings, Version 2.0, at Microsoft - Question - NYTimes.com

"I’ve come to believe that to be a great leader, you have to combine thought leadership, business leadership and great people management. I think most people tend to focus more on one of those three. I used to think it was all about thought leadership. Some people think it’s all about your ability to manage people. But the truth is, great leaders have to have a mix of those things."

Why Sync Is So Difficult - NYTimes.com

Why Sync Is So Difficult - NYTimes.com

Processor Editorial Article - Fibre Channel vs. InfiniBand vs. Ethernet

Processor Editorial Article - Fibre Channel vs. InfiniBand vs. Ethernet

NAB 2009: Omneon Sharpens Production Focus - 2009-04-19 19:14:39 | Broadcasting & Cable

NAB 2009: Omneon Sharpens Production Focus - 2009-04-19 19:14:39 | Broadcasting & Cable: "'It's a mutual gain,' said Aspera CEO and co-founder Michelle Munson, who added that Castify also has some unique technology that Aspera liked and plans to further develop. Moreover, she said getting access to Omneon's established sales channel will be a big boost to Aspera, which is a 'much earlier, younger company.'"

10-GbE in the mainstream - 5/1/2008 - EDN

10-GbE in the mainstream - 5/1/2008 - EDN: "'Today, everyone is using everyone else's computers, such as for Web-based storage,' says Bob Nunn, president and chief executive officer of Fulcrum Microsystems. 'But the goal of a virtualized data center won't be achieved without a high-bandwidth interconnect technology that is common to the entire data center.' For many, including Nunn, 10-GbE is that interconnect technology."

PolyServe and Rackable Systems burst past one Gigabyte per second in NAS I/O throughput

PolyServe and Rackable Systems burst past one Gigabyte per second in NAS I/O throughput: "At better than one gigabyte per second, the absolute performance results of these tests are truly impressive', stated Arun Taneja, founder of the Taneja Group, which audited the benchmark results. 'When combined with the right enterprise NAS software features, I think these numbers will grab serious user attention. Especially impressive is that this exceptional throughput was accomplished using standard building blocks - not proprietary platforms built exclusively for NAS."

Cablevision Goes for U.S. Broadband Speed Record - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Cablevision Goes for U.S. Broadband Speed Record - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: "I don’t think ultra-wideband will have a significant impact in the second half. I think it’s a long-term strategy. I think the primary user is small business and not residential in the short run."

Web Site Offers Anonymous Chats With Strangers - NYTimes.com

Web Site Offers Anonymous Chats With Strangers - NYTimes.com: "Omegle.com connects its users with random, anonymous strangers for a private, real-time chat. The site, which started last month, was developed by Leif K-Brooks, an 18-year-old amateur Web programmer and high school student in Vermont who was worried that people’s Web interactions had “become stagnant.”"

G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc - NYTimes.com

G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc - NYTimes.com

The recent breakthrough by the team, working at the G.E. lab in Niskayuna, N.Y., north of Albany, was a 200-fold increase in the reflective power of their holograms, putting them at the bottom range of light reflections readable by current Blu-ray machines.

Advanced Bash Shell Scripting Guide - $RANDOM: generate random integer

Advanced Bash Shell Scripting Guide - $RANDOM: generate random integer

Normal Distribution approximations.

Normal Distribution approximations.: "Simulating random normal numbers"

10G Ethernet Aims for the Enterprise

Who need 10G Ethernet?

HP Pushes Petabytes

HP Pushes Petabytes - Review Tom's Hardware : High Powered Web Servers from HP and IBM:

"That’s very different from the usual methods for building large storage systems, Callahan says. “A lot of approaches in the past have been a server with direct attached drives, which meant that in order to have a complete switched extreme connection between the server and drives, it had to be fibre channel,” Callahan said."