From 6296c7a35c8642dc1587041bfa27fc187e8a1acf Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Poul-Henning Kamp Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 22:14:03 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Caching is still important. --- doc/sphinx/phk/farfaraway.rst | 80 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ doc/sphinx/phk/index.rst | 1 + 2 files changed, 81 insertions(+) create mode 100644 doc/sphinx/phk/farfaraway.rst diff --git a/doc/sphinx/phk/farfaraway.rst b/doc/sphinx/phk/farfaraway.rst new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..5cc8271a696 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/sphinx/phk/farfaraway.rst @@ -0,0 +1,80 @@ +.. _phk_farfaraway: + +============= +Far, far away +============= + +I realize I'm showing my age when I admit that Slades 1974 hit `"Far +Far Away" `_ was one +of the first rock-ballads I truly loved. (In case you have never +heard of Slade or the 1970'ies british glam-rock, you may want to +protect your innocence and *not* click on that link.) + +Some years back I got invited to a conference in New Zealand, and +that is "far far away" from Denmark. So far away in fact, that I +downloaded the entire +`Bell Systems Technical Journal `_ +to my Kobo eReader in order to have something to do during the 24 +hour air-traffic "experience". + +BSTJ is good reading, for instance you learn tha they invented +`Agile Programming `_ +back in 1983, but failed to come up with a hip name. + +Anyway, Internet Access in New Zealand is like time-travel back to +around Y2K or so, and when one of my time-nuts friends launched a +`Kickstarter project `_ it didn't take much before his residental connection folded. + +As it happens, I am in the process of setting up the new Varnish-Cache.org +project server just now, generously sponsored/donated by `RootBSD.com +`_, so it was natural for me to offer to +help him out. + +I don't need to explain varnishhist to this audience:: + + + | + | + || + || + || + || + || + || + || + || + || + || + || ## + ||| ## + ||| # ## # + ||||| # ##### + +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- + |1e-6 |1e-5 |1e-4 |1e-3 |1e-2 |1e-1 |1e0 |1e1 |1e2 + +Most of us who live in civilized places, tend to forget that the InterNet +is very unevenly distributed. + +My ISP enabled IPv6 on the VDSL2+ line to my beach-house today, +some people have fiber, but in terms head-count, the majority of +the world has really horrible internet connections. + +In some cases it is the last mile, for instance if you live out at some +remote fjord in Norway. + +In other cases it is a mid-net bottle-neck, in the case of New +Zealand a shortage of transoceanic fiber cables [#f1]_ . + +Caching is not a cure-all, it is far from a miracle cure, even thought it +might seem that way sometimes. + +But as prophylactic for bandwidth troubles, it is second to none. + +*phk* + +.. [#f1] These `BSTJ articles about the first Atlantic phone cable + `_ + will give you an appreciation of why that is not a trivial problem + to solve. + + diff --git a/doc/sphinx/phk/index.rst b/doc/sphinx/phk/index.rst index 0556769f286..60e2846c281 100644 --- a/doc/sphinx/phk/index.rst +++ b/doc/sphinx/phk/index.rst @@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ You may or may not want to know what Poul-Henning thinks. .. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1 + farfaraway.rst thatslow.rst firstdesign.rst 10goingon50.rst