At the The China Vortex, Paul Denlinger discusses how there is no unified “China market”, no monolithic, simplistic, single-minded Goliath that the rest of the world is trying to deal with. While I do not have the depth of on the ground experience that Mr. Denlinger has (I have not yet been blessed with the opportunity to visit or do business in China), I can see the truth he brings to the discussion.

One of the great pits that Western culture falls into when dealing with the China problem is just that: It is seen as a problem, not an opportunity to expand and learn from a culture that deals with life, philosophy, and business in a very different manner.

This should come as no surprise to any astute student of History, or even modern geopolitics, as the way that nations deal with perceived threats or challenges is to create a national culture of The Other, the us-v-them foreign policy.

When Japan was the country du jour in the 1980s, the Western World respected it, in a very shallow way, as a fellow industrial nation with a strong warrior culture. However, it was treated in a simple way, with Western media portrayals that strengthened perceived stereotypes, and plastered over the profound differences that exist within Japan, and within the Japanese people.

China is even more of a victim of this Politics of the Other, having spent more than 50 years as one of the adversaries in the Cold War, being vilified and portrayed in the least flattering light possible. Even without the base Human interpretation of simplistic interpretations of the Other, the West is crippled from the start in its attempts to understand a nation as large, diverse, and fractured as China.

China is far more than Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and small cadre of smaller, but no less important industrial / post-industrial metropolitan areas.

Drawing on my experience in trying to interpret Internet performance data from within this nation, it is clear to even the casual observer that the Chinese Internet does not simply exist in the major cities. It extends into the far reaches of the country, fractured by the internal conflicts of the connectivity providers, government officials at a many levels, and the unstoppable drive and creativity of the people who see the Internet as an opportunity to make their way in their world.

Cultural and national stereotypes are the way that humans ineffectively deal with the differences that exist. But just as the terms “All Brits..”, “All the French..”, “All Germans…”, “All Argentinians..”, et al. should be treated with disdain and seen as a sign of ignorance, using the words “All Chinese…” or “All of China…” should be quickly quashed and carted off to the dustbin of simplistic paranoia and xenophobia.

There is no such thing as a threat. As it is often stated in other contexts, a threat is simply an opportunity that is hidden by your own prejudices.

Tags: Beijing, business, China, china market, chinese, diversity, government, Hong Kong, Internet, Internet performance data, Japan, media portrayals, national identity, nationalism, paranoia, Paul Denlinger, Shanghai, the other, xenophobia

In the GigaOm blog today, Allen Leinwand puts up a monstrous wake-up call to all the hip and cool Web 2.0 companies out there: Your apps run across the Internet [here].

I have spent 9 years investigating, diagnosing, and validating the Web performance issues of companies. I can tear the Web performance data of a site down quickly and ask pointed questions about why certain components of an application are behaving poorly.

But even after 9 years, there are still gimme problems around connection setup that I can seem brilliant about, not because I have some secret knowledge, but because I think of Web performance from the Network UP, not from the Application DOWN.

The subtlety of this difference what Leinwand is alluding to. Fancy applications run across the Internet. The Internet is built on TCP. And TCP is built on-top of a very complex networking infrastructure that is way beyond the realm of my skills.

If you don’t know what packet loss looks like, or how your fancy app presents to clients, or how to ensure that this data is collected and presented to you in a timely way, then you are being exposed to alerting by client calls.

All because you thought the biggest problem was scaling your app, not ensuring that the network it crossed to reach people affected the way it performed. Network geeks created Web 1.0; Web 2.0 seems to think they are mostly unecessary.

Wrong.

Measure your performance. Understand TCP. Hire a network geek (or 20).

Then sleep better at night.

Tags: Allen Leinwand, GigaOm, Internet, networking, performance measurement, TCP, Web 1.0

In today’s Boston Globe, there is an article discussing why Facebook went to the Valley instead of staying in the Boston area (article online).

Having now lived in both areas for nearly equal amounts of time, I can tell you that there are substantial differences between them. People from Boston may violently disagree, but I have found that the innovative spirit of the Valley, the one that drove the creation of the commercial Internet, does not exist here.

I am, however, someone who now laughs at the insular culture of the Valley, a place that still considers itself the center of the Internet innovation universe. I had a chance to meet with a growing Internet firm while I was out there on business last week (not Technorati), and I found the hubris and ego in the meeting that I attended laughable.

I was not laughing at this firm’s success, which has been great. I was laughing at the fact that the mid-level managers that we met with had the gall to effectively state that having their name on our customer list entitled (and yes, entitlement is also a large part of the culture) them to demand a deal that none of our customers get.

I can’t be sure what the sales guy I went with thought, but I left the meetings laughing. This company, which is younger than my youngest son, thought it had more pull with us than the multi-hundred billion financial firms we deal with daily. Thought that it had more pull than the large, first-generation Internet companies that we work closely with.

Yes, Boston does not generally fund and encourage a culture of innovation (yes, there are always exceptions). But those who seek to take the next great idea to the Internet should beware the hubris of the Valley.

Tags: API, book, Boston, business, content, customers, EAD, HTTP, IE, IM, Internet, ISP, it, LAN, live, Om, One, online, Technorati

My system has a daily job to collect and aggregate the IP Blocks distributed by the five registrars into a single database, and then provide high-level WHOIS information for this data. If you want to try this yourself, the interface here.

On an extremely irregular basis, I aggregate the statistics from this data, and present it to the masses for the examination. I might actually automate this data someday!

So, for August 2007 (as of August 21, 2007), here are the aggregated IP distribution statistics broken down by registrar and country.

(more…)

Tags: Africa, AFRINIC, APNIC, Argentina, ARIN, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, content, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, data, database, Denmark, distribution, Egypt, Europe, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, HTTP, Hungary, IE, India, Indonesia, information, Internet, IP, ip address, IRAN, Ireland, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF, ISP, Israel, it, Italy, Japan, KOREA, LACNIC, LAN, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Om, One, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, pr, Registrar, registrars, Registry, RIPE, Romania, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, SLOVAKIA, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, statistics, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Technorati, Thailand, tn, Turkey, tv, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Vietnam

Netcraft noted that Yahoo encountered a bit of a headache today. So I fired up my handy-dandy little performance system and had a look.

Although for an organization and infrastructure the size of Yahoo’s this may have been a big event, in my experience, this was a "stuff happens on the Internet" sort of thing.

Move along people; there’s nothing to see. It is not the apocalyptic event that Netcraft is making it out to be. Google burps and barfs all the time, and everyone grumbles. But there is no need to run in circles and scream and shout.

Yeesh!

Tags: GrabPERF, Netcraft, Yahoo, outage, performance issues, panic, crisis

Tags: app, ARIN, EAD, Google, GrabPERF, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, Internet, Issues, it, Om, One, outage, performance, performance issues, run, Technorati

My side project, GrabPERF, is looking for a few good measurement locations.

Right now, there are only five measurement locations, two of which are in my basement, on my personal Internet connection. I am hoping, through this pledge drive, to find a number of additional locations. Areas desperately needed include:

• East Coast, USA
• West Coast, USA
• Midwest, USA
• UK
• Asia-Pac
• Southeast Asia
• Australia / New Zealand

Yeah, I know. I am asking for the world. Can’t hurt to try though.

Basic requirements are a Linux box with a static IP address. Additional requirements are documented here.

You can express your interest in hosting a measurement site by filling in the GrabPERF Contact Form or contacting me directly.

Thank you for your continuing support.

Tags: GrabPERF, measurement locations, Web performance

Tags: Asia, Australia, contact form, GrabPERF, GrabPERF.org, HTTP, IE, Internet, IP, ip address, it, LAN, Linux, measurement, New Zealand, Om, performance, personal, PHP, pr, Technorati, web, Web Performance, Web+performance

I am writing up a client presentation for next week, and I just realized just how flawed Internet Explorer is. Microsoft claims that the browser is standards compliant. Yet it still doesn’t support HTTP pipelining.

And the frustrating part? They won’t tell us why. I have my suspicions, which include TCP stack issues and a flawed HTTP handling mechanism that is still based on Windows 95 architecture, but an explanation from Redmond would be nice.

Every (and I mean every) other browser can do this.

Microsoft, it’s time you detached your Web browser from your OS, like you’ve forced everyone else to do.

Tags: HTTP, pipelining, RFC 2616, Firefox, Opera, HTTP Pipelining, Internet Explorer

Tags: browser, client, cro, Firefox, HTTP, HTTP pipelining, IE, IM, Internet, Internet Explorer, IP, Issues, it, LAN, Microsoft, Om, One, pipelining, pr, TCP, Technorati, web, Web browser, window, Windows

A few years ago, I wrote an article on how GZIP compression improved Web performance. Don Marti at the Linux Journal was a great editor, and eventually, the article ended up in the online version of the Magazine.

At the time, I used Ian Holsman’s webperf.org (now renamed ITScales) to capture the data. Now that I have built my own Web performance monitoring network, I thought I would repeat the experiment.

You can see the comparative results at these locations:

• Wikipedia
• Google News
• Technorati
• Juniper Networks — they own the Redline hardware acceleration device
• F5 Networks — they sell the F5 hardware acceleration device

After I have collected a lot more data, I will be re-visiting the article and commenting on the state of compression technology on the Internet.

If you would like to suggest a site to measure, please leave a comment.

Technorati Tags: HTTP, Web+Compression, Web+performance, GrabPERF, study, HTTP+compression

Tags: compress, compression, data, Google, GrabPERF, GrabPERF.org, gzip, HTML, HTTP, IM, Internet, IP, it, LAN, leave, Linux, Om, online, performance, PHP, pr, Technorati, web, Web Performance, Web+performance, WebPerformance.Org

Apparent using HTTP compression alongside HTTP/1.1 will cause certain versions of MSIE 6.0 to implode. [here]

I personally think this was because the NSA power shortage was making it too hard for the spooks to snoop on compressed Web traffic. [here]

Via: Port80 Software

PS: No, I won’t turn off compression because Microsoft did something really stupid.

Technorati Tags: Internet+Explorer, Internet+Explorer+6.0, MSIE, Port80+Software, HTTP+Compression, Web+Performance, Microsoft, NSA

Tags: app, ASP, browser, compress, compression, cro, HTTP, IE, IM, Internet, it, LAN, Microsoft, MSIE, Om, performance, personal, pr, Technorati, traffic, web, Web+performance

This post has two underlying reasons for existing: 1) to test out the new MSFT Live Writer Beta; and 2) to talk about a great story that GigaOm pointed us to today.

Om Malik pointed out a story in the Seattle Times today that talked about “Broadband in the Boonies”. Having grown up in the boonies of British Columbia, this immediately got my attention. The story discusses the explosive growth of Internet businesses in the now heavily wired interior of Washington State; the story focuses on the are around Twisp, Winthrop and the Methow Valley.

Until you have been in this area, and I have, you don’t get the possibility of winter isolation. The story talks about how these places are four hours from Seattle; what they neglect to mention is that this is 4 hours in the period between April 15 and October 15, depending on snow.

The direct westerly route to Seattle from these locations passes through the Cascades. Through the extremely high and snowy Cascades.

Samantha and I took a spur of the moment detour through this little part of heaven, pausing a night in a campground in Twisp. Right on the river. When we woke up the next morning, I remembered how much I missed those early morning moments in the mountains.

Twisp is far more isolated than Golden, BC, or any of the other towns that we passed through on our trip this summer. But it is a reminder to us all that place is important. Not because we have to be there, but because it is where we are at home.

I have lived in the Valley. I have lived in Massachusetts. But neither has been home.

And to me, home is worth more than anything.

Technorati Tags: GigaOm, Seattle+Times, Twisp, Winthrop, Methow+Valley, Washington+State, Home, Broadband, Freedom, Om+Malik

Tags: attention, broadband, business, GigaOm, HTTP, IE, IM, Internet, IP, ISP, it, LAN, live, Malik, Massachusetts, media, Om, Om Malik, pr, Technorati, the other