[Sussex] I'm not receiving any emails from slug

[Steve Dobson]

Hi Alan

On Thu, 2008-11-20 at 20:40 +0100, alan johns wrote:
> Thanks for the help and the learning curve I am now on. I received the
> two slug emails  ref: my plea for help and I not worried now that I
> may have bee hijacked and might be going through some one elses
> computer before mine.

Glad it was helpful.  Running your own e-mail server is probably a bit
much for you at the moment as I forgot to say that it needs to be
connected to the Internet 24/7/365 and it should have a permanent IP
address too.

> I have been trying with some success with Ubuntu as I would like to go
> 100% Linux and ditch M$ well and truly for good,

Good for you.

> but hate to say that my w2k server flies along(240kbps) and Ubuntu
> varies from bytes/sec to kbps on the update manager/other isp's, maybe
> M$ and cisco have something to do with it. Back's to the man pages for
> me and again thank you for your help.

I'm not sure why you are seeing a difference in speed, but I can think
of two reasons off the top of my head and both probably play their part
(as do the ones I can think of quickly).

1). Windows and Linux maybe calculating the speed differently.  Packet
rates are not an exact science, the packets can be routed differently
and there are the occasional errors requiring re-transmits.  All this
happens invisibly to the software trying to calculate the download rate.

So while both systems are may calculating the download rate in 5 second
chunks one could take the average over the last 3 minutes and the other
the fastest over the last 5.  Whatever system you're looking at I
wouldn't trust it to be accurate either way.

2). I doubt Cisco and M$ have done a deal.  Partly because I dislike
conspiracy theories, but mostly because it isn't in Cisco's best
interest to do so.  Their business is the moving of packets around the
network and some of those networks are very big indeed.  Imagine how
damaging it would be for Cisco's business if it got out that packets for
M$ systems were being given preferential treatment.  

Also it would be very difficult to tell which OS a packet is ultimately
destine for.  There is nothing in each packet to determine this and only
some protocols (HTTP for example) that do exchange that kind of
information.  Anything trying to throttle by source/designation OS would
need to do a lot of packet sniffing & decoding, and remember a lot of
information of packets seen before.  That would increase the hardware
costs of the hardware.  No, not likely in my book[1].

I know that some ISP in the US are (looking) to give preferential
treatment by packet type.  But this is to support their other services
like VoIP or Video on Demand.  The American ISP market is very different
to here.  In most homes there there is only one company that can provide
your with your phone and Internet connectivity, it is effectively a set
of closed markets.  Here in the UK we have some real competition as all
ISPs can supply each home just the same.

What you maybe seeing when your using Ubuntu is bottle necking in the
network.  I doubt you are doing the same things, surfing to the same
sites when on Windows and Ubuntu.  Different Internet usage will get
different results depending upon the state of the Internet at that point
in time.

Steve

[1] Remember that when putting together a large network you're going to
going to need a lot of hardware.  Having a router, switch or gateway
more powerful than it needs to be just to get the job done will probably
price it out of the market.[2]

[2] As an example of how expensive large system role-outs can be
consider Sun a few years back.  Just about every member of staff had
both a Sun workstation and a Windows PC on their desk.  Bother were
needed because Sun didn't have an office suite for Solaris.

Sun did it's research.  It was cheaper to buy a company called
StarOffice and have them port their office suite to Solaris than it was
to role out a new set of Windows PCs and M$ Office software to their
staff.  Once ported to Solaris the Linux port was easy and practically
free.

Sun released their free version OpenOffice because that was good for
their business.  Sun makes most of its money by selling hardware and
support for those systems.  Software is an enabler, so it make sense for
Sun to give software away for free because it increases the chances that
you'll buy their hardware.

-- 
Steve Dobson

TIPS FOR PERFORMERS:
Playing cards have the top half upside-down to help cheaters.
There are a finite number of jokes in the universe.
Singing is a trick to get people to listen to music longer than
they would ordinarily.
There is no music in space.
People will pay to watch people make sounds.
Everything on stage should be larger than in real life.

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