Inspired by this post I decided to put my iTunes library through wordle:
Unfortunately they don’t have larger thumbnails.
iTunes Music Library Visualization
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How fast is the iPhone 3G?
I decided to test my iPhone 3G on EDGE, 3G, Wifi, and Wifi + VPN using testmyiphone.com.
Here are my results.
EDGE:
3G:
WiFi:
WiFi + VPN:
I don’t really know why using the VPN is slower, but it could have just been a fluke. I only ran the test once and the first time it said I was getting 80kbps downstream. Definitely an error there. Also the site caused my phone to lock up.
How I Manage My Own Data Storage
I’ve been (seriously) playing with computers since I was about 12 years old. So in the last 10 years or so, one of the things I’ve always tried to remain conscious of is how reliable (or unreliable) my computer is. No one likes it when their computer breaks (not even someone who is talented at fixing them). For me, this concern has been brought on by the stress of losing data that, in hindsight, may not have been all that important. But, it was a data loss nonetheless and no one likes it when it happens.
So when I was in high school, my first strategy was to put my OS on a different drive than my user data. I figured that the system drive would experience many more read/writes than the data drive, because of paging and other things. So, it would be more prone to stress than a data drive that gets used less vigorously. I kept this strategy for several years. I was lucky enough to replace drives before they failed (as all drives do).
But, when I got to Case, I was exposed to a ridiculously fast fiber optic network that made it even easier to fill my hard drive with junk I probably don’t need. I needed a storage solution that met a few objectives:
- It had to be a relatively large amount available storage.
- It had to provide some level of fault-tolerance
- It had to run on Linux, since I was tired of switching between Linux and Windows Server 2003. I chose Linux and I was sticking with it.
So I built a 1.2TB software RAID5 array. There’s a pic missing on that page, I’ll see if I can locate it or take another. I also have some other items to add to that page, including benchmarks and other info. The RAID array is terrific. It’s survived one and a half drive failures (one legitimate drive failure and half a drive failure that I simulated by yanking a disc while it was on). Rebuilding the array takes several hours, but that’s to be expected. More on that when I update that post.
So of course, even with local data fault-tolerance, I want to have an off-site backup service. At first I was using Dreamhost, but they tried to extort a bunch of money out of me to use my storage space for backups. It was really shady. But it did force me to look elsewhere, and I’m glad I did. I wanted a cross-platform solution (given the heterogenous nature of my current computer collection). So I selected JungleDisk, which uses Amazon’s S3 web service for data storage. I pay a pitance (maybe a couple of dollars per month, if that) to store about 20GB of data. Backups happen nightly (or however often you select).
I use JungleDisk to backup all of the documents I’ve written in college, all of the code I’ve written, all of my digital photos, my encrypted password database, and a dump of my MySQL databases. Everything is encrypted before it even leaves my computer. The client runs right on my file server and just works. It’s an absolutely terrific product. My only complaint (a feature request, really) is that I wish it would e-mail me a copy of its log file every time a backup occurs. That way I know if it was successful and what was transferred.
I foresee keeping this setup for quite a while.
Updates: I added an extra drive to the RAID array. A few quick terminal commands later and I’m up to 1.5TB. Also, JungleDisk added a reporting option. You can get an e-mail when a backup job completes but if you want details you have to pay for their monthly service.
How fast is the Case Network, really?
This is a question Colin and I thought about a few months ago. Well there’s a two-part answer to that. Our network is entirely gigabit fiber end-to-end. So, theoretically I should be able to get 1000mbits/sec between two machines. However, with network IO overhead and other hardware limitations, it seems the best I can do is:
alex@tardis:~$ iperf -s -w 100K ------------------------------------------------------------ Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 200 KByte (WARNING: requested 100 KByte) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 4] local 129.22.56.170 port 5001 connected with 129.22.57.154 port 53101 [ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 1.08 GBytes 928 Mbits/sec
So about 930 Mbits/sec between two machines on the same network switch. I had to tune the TCP window a little bit to get that, but that’s still not bad. Of course real-world transfers are much slower because of a number of reasons: protocol limitations (like HTTP, FTP, Samba, etc), IO speeds on hard drives, etc. For example, even though I can achieve nearly 930 mbits/sec between my two Linux machines using raw socket connections (where the source of the data on both machines is in memory), Samba transfers seem to top out around 250 mbits/sec, due to Samba limitations and probably a bit of hardware limitations as well, I’m sure.
Measuring internet bandwidth is a little trickier. Case is connected to a few ‘internets’. Obviously, we are connected to the same internet that everyone else in the world uses (the ‘commodity’ internet). Our ISP for that is OneCommunity and our SLA calls gives us 450Mbits/sec (upstream and downstream). Since our internal LAN behaves, essentially, as one giant network switch (and since we also don’t do any significant packet shaping), every end user can consume as much of that bandwidth as possible. In this case, data transfer speeds are more dependent on the source you’re downloading from (or the destination you’re uploading to). We’re also connected to internet2 (i2), which is a private fiber optic network for Higher Education institutions and research labs (like Los Alamos National Laboratory).
So, measuring i2 bandwidth can be accomplished by downloading a file hosted on an i2 server:
alex@tardis:/sata-raid5/downloads$ wget http://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/linux/ubuntu-releases/hardy/ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso
--17:40:46-- http://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/linux/ubuntu-releases/hardy/ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso
=> `ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso'
Resolving ftp.ussg.iu.edu... 156.56.247.193
Connecting to ftp.ussg.iu.edu|156.56.247.193|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 728,221,696 (694M) [application/octet-stream]
100%[=================================================================================>] 728,221,696 5.24M/s ETA 00:00
17:42:44 (5.91 MB/s) - `ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso' saved [728221696/728221696]
So 6MB/s is roughly 48mbits/sec.
Let’s download something over a known fast commodity internet source (One of Apple’s servers that serves movie trailers):
alex@tardis:/sata-raid5/downloads$ wget http://movies.apple.com/movies/sony_pictures/quantum_of_solace/quantum_of_solace-tlr1_h1080p.mov
--17:55:22-- http://movies.apple.com/movies/sony_pictures/quantum_of_solace/quantum_of_solace-tlr1_h1080p.mov
=> `quantum_of_solace-tlr1_h1080p.mov'
Resolving movies.apple.com... 192.5.110.40, 192.5.110.39
Connecting to movies.apple.com|192.5.110.40|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 141,490,583 (135M) [video/quicktime]
100%[=================================================================================>] 141,490,583 6.74M/s ETA 00:00
17:55:39 (8.05 MB/s) - `quantum_of_solace-tlr1_h1080p.mov' saved [141490583/141490583]
So that’s pretty fast, even faster than i2. But then I forgot to look up the host (movies.apple.com) in the first place
alex@tardis:/sata-raid5/downloads$ tracepath movies.apple.com
1: tardis.STUDENT.CWRU.Edu (129.22.56.170) 0.118ms pmtu 1500
1: 129.22.56.2 (129.22.56.2) 0.415ms
2: 10.2.0.50 (10.2.0.50) 0.446ms
3: cwru2-fa4-0-0.cwru.edu (192.5.109.1) 0.681ms
4: a192-5-110-40.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com (192.5.110.40) 0.915ms reached
Resume: pmtu 1500 hops 4 back 4
and was reminded we have our own private Akamai cache, so that explains why the 135MB trailer download in 17 seconds–that Akamai cache is on our internal network, but outside our firewall, so that’s why it’s not even faster. Let’s try another server (Diggnation podcast distribution server):
alex@tardis:/sata-raid5/downloads$ wget http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mov/bitcast-a.bitgravity.com/revision3/web/diggnation/0160/diggnation--0160--2008-07-24joshv--hd.h264.mov
--17:59:27-- http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mov/bitcast-a.bitgravity.com/revision3/web/diggnation/0160/diggnation--0160--2008-07-24joshv--hd.h264.mov
=> `diggnation--0160--2008-07-24joshv--hd.h264.mov'
Resolving www.podtrac.com... 69.16.233.67
Connecting to www.podtrac.com|69.16.233.67|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://bitcast-a.bitgravity.com/revision3/web/diggnation/0160/diggnation--0160--2008-07-24joshv--hd.h264.mov [following]
--17:59:27-- http://bitcast-a.bitgravity.com/revision3/web/diggnation/0160/diggnation--0160--2008-07-24joshv--hd.h264.mov
=> `diggnation--0160--2008-07-24joshv--hd.h264.mov'
Resolving bitcast-a.bitgravity.com... 208.67.237.237
Connecting to bitcast-a.bitgravity.com|208.67.237.237|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 716,434,724 (683M) [video/quicktime]
100%[=================================================================================>] 716,434,724 4.38M/s ETA 00:00
18:02:21 (3.92 MB/s) - `diggnation--0160--2008-07-24joshv--hd.h264.mov' saved [716434724/716434724]
About 4MB/sec equals 32mbits/sec.
Of course there are a few problems with these tests. For one, it suffers from a pretty obvious selection bias: I purposely picked hosts that I knew ahead of time were fast enough to show off the network speed. But I think the question is not “How fast is the Case network on average” but “How fast can you make the Case network go?” The external hosts I tested are among the fastest I know of.
More information: Network traffic stats, contains near real-time information on network traffic as well as IP routing info, topology maps, etc. Some links on that page may require a Case Network ID
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Google: Do you know how to do push? Do you know what an enterprise is?
You’d figure with all the Ph.D’s they have working at Google, they’d figure out a way to do push e-mail, calendaring, and contacts to the iPhone. What was the last new big feature Google rolled out in Gmail? IMAP? A standard that’s been around for ages?
I can’t believe they’ve let Yahoo! take all the iPhone push e-mail glory for so long. Where’s Google’s commitment to take the ‘world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ ? There are over a million new iPhone 3Gs out there. There are at least 6+ million first generation iPhones. How close to Blackberry’s market penetration is Apple going to have to get before Google takes them seriously as a mobile platform?
I think it’s great that they’ve reformatted some of their pages to be iPhone compatible. But, seriously, I think Gmail is so long overdue for new features, it’s almost a joke. And don’t even get me started on Google Calendar and Google Apps. How powerful of a service would it be to be able to say:
“OK, we, Google, are offering Google Apps for your domain, just as we always have. But, we are now adding enterprise-level calendaring, e-mail, and contact management. And, as a member of different Apps domains, you can have all your e-mail in one account. You can see all your calendar events on one (or several) calendar layers. You can push all your contacts, calendars, and e-mail to your Blackberry (maybe) or iPhone. You can two-way sync with Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail.App, iCal, Address Book, Evolution, etc.”
That’s a Google world I hope to one day live in.
Now blogging from my iPhone
I’m testing out the new WordPress app for the iPhone and it seems to work well for short posts. Unfortunately while setting it up it made a fake post that was distributed to email subscribers and then deleted.
iPhone day: The Full Story
Release Day
Tommy and I were interviewed and photographed by the Plain Dealer. The PD also put us on the front page of the Business section. And, all of that caused us to be mentioned in the Case Daily (since we loudly mentioned our affiliation with Case to any reporter who talked to us). We are also supposedly on WEWS, but I can’t find the video. I called my parents to TiVo it for me, so I’ll probably see it the next time I visit. Tommy and I are still shocked at the attention we got from this. We had such a great time sneaking around and getting our phones. The media attention is certainly the icing on the cake.
We were probably the first two people in Legacy to buy iPhone 3Gs. The three guys in front of us all had problems buying them (account issues, missed payments, etc). If you want to split hairs, I was the first person in Legacy to actually buy an iPhone 3G since my credit card processed faster than Tommy’s. But, he walked out of the store first, and that is why he got way more media attention than I did. So, I think he wins that one.
Here are some pictures and video of the whole event:
(I really encourage you to go to the Flickr set, where I have added comments, notes, and tags.)
Afterwards, we went back to our apartment where we slept the rest of the day and recovered from the festivities.
Uh-oh: how come my GPS isn’t working?
The next day I noticed I was no longer able to use any location-aware application. Tommy joked it was from overuse and that the phone was just tired. But it became clear that there was something wrong with it. So, of course we went back to the Apple Store where, after trying some things and applying a software update that took forever, they replaced my phone free of charge.
Uh-oh: how come I don’t have any service?
So when they replaced my phone, they accidentally de-registered my SIM card, so we had to go to the nearby AT&T store to get it reactivated. When that was done, my phone worked like a charm.
Thank You
I’d like to thank everyone that sent me messages about my appearances online and in print: Margaret, Lev, Neil, Krystin, and Sonia (I think that’s everyone).
I’d also like to thank everyone at the Apple Store who helped me out:
Francis, Jeremy, Gerry, Vince, and the guy who unboxed the phone for me: sorry buddy, I forget your name. I was too busy playing with my phone.
iPhone day: Waiting in line
Tommy and I are wating in line at the Apple Store in Legacy Village. We are 4th and 5th in line respectively. Our iPhone-eager comrades hail from as far away as Toledo.
The photos are a little bit grainy since they were taken with (what else?) Tommy’s iPhone. Expect more updates soon.
How to: Speed Up Your Ubuntu Package Updates
If you’re on a college or university network, chances are you have access to internet2 (i2), the private internet that connects many higher education institutions.
Recently, I attended a meeting at the Ohio Supercomputing Center where the leadership of OARnet (a private fiber network in Ohio, which Case accesses) announced they were removing bandwidth limitations. Soon (perhaps now, even), our OARnet (and therefore i2) bandwidth will be at least 500mbits/sec, a 300% increase over our current service level.
You can exploit this new increase in bandwidth by selecting package mirrors that are on i2. Then, when you access them on your campus network, the traffic will be routed over the faster connection. For example, at Case our routers are smart enough to know if you are accessing a machine that is reachable over i2 and route your traffic accordingly.
So, fire up a terminal and type:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
And then find-and-replace “us.archive.ubuntu.com” with a .edu package mirror (I use http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu/).
When I download packages, I would get a measly few hundred KB/sec. Now I get several MB (megabytes!) per second.
Leave any questions or comments below.
Will I Get a New iPhone today?
There are two answers to that:
1. Hell yes.
2. Who knows. Apparently the phones might not be on sale until next week.
Either way, I’m really excited to get one. As it turns out, I can realize a lower TCO over two years by canceling my current Verizon contract, paying the cancellation fee, selling my current phone on eBay, and then signing a new AT&T contract and buying an iPhone (with or without the rumored subsidies) than by upgrading my current service (to the minimum $80/month) and getting a Blackberry (which I would have to purchase at full price – $400).
Update: No. July 11th. I’m camping out in front of the store the night before. MacBookPro and DSLR in hand.