I will have been in the US for a decade as of July 27 2009. The first move saw me take my family 1,000 miles south to the Bay Area and then 3,500 miles east to the Boston area.

When I left Canada, I always assumed that my stay in the Excited States would be short. I was in the country to learn, grow, take advantage of the experience that the giant next door would give me. Then we would return to Canada and settle into a quiet life.

Ten years on, I have a Green Card (don’t ask about that nightmare) and when I come home to Canada, I realize how far I have wandered from the country that I still refer to as home.

Add to that the fact that most of the visits we make are to one of the fastest growing and most expensive cities in the country and every trip out to places I once knew brings ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ moments.

I wax nostalgic for this place, this city near the mountains, surrounded by the sea. It is the city of my young adult life, where I learned the skills I needed to get on in life; where I met my wife; where I felt at home.

What a difference ten years makes. We have placed our roots in another place, a very different place. A place that couldn’t be more different than here.

I joke that I am legally prevented from voting in two countries. As a transplant I will never be completely at home in the place where I live. The country of my birth is an interesting and lovely place, a stranger that I rediscover a little bit on every visit.

When we travel back to the country of my birth, I realize that the move to the US saved me, saved from being trapped by narrow goals and shortened horizons. But the move came with a price.

As someone who lives with a gardener, I know the value of a plant in the right place. Often you don’t discover that a plant is in the wrong spot until you have had it for a few years. Then, one season, you transplant it, and, with some more sun and a little more water, it blossoms, it thrives.

The gardener who does that is always pleased with the results, but is frustrated by the time lost by having a wonderful plant fight for life, wasting its its energy and effort to survive rather than to thrive.

To thrive, I had to leave. But I left a piece of me behind.

While I was performing my standard Windows Update on my work virtual machine this morning, I wondered if the promised Internet Explorer 8.0 release to Windows Update had been dropped.

I switched to my test-bed, vanilla Windows XP virtual machine, ran Windows Update, and PING! Up it came. The masses of people who blindly do what Windows Update tells them to do will now be installing Internet Explorer 8 on their machines.

The interesting thing is that the only piece of software that Windows Update said was a critical Update was Internet Explorer 8.0. Given that it would be replacing Internet Explorer 7.0 on my virtual machine, how bad was Internet Explorer 7? Are they trying to push MSIE6 and MSIE7 out of the way ASAP?

Today should see a large number of new installs of Internet Explorer 8, either on purpose or inadvertently by those folks who install everything that Microsoft tells them to. I will be monitoring StatCounter’s GlobalStats over the next few days to see if there is a spike in, most notably, US installs of Internet Explorer 8.

Just as a sidebar, Internet Explorer 8, without the support of Windows Update, has increased from 3.5% to 6.28% of the browser share in the US (3.33% to 6.2% in North America; 2.65% to 4.4% Worldwide) in the April 1-28 2009 period. [Stats courtesy of StatCounter GlobalStats]

I can’t make a lot of comments about the quality of browsing experience in one version of Internet Explorer over another; I have been a dedicated Firefox user on Mac, and a Safari user on Windows (yes, that is weird) for a while. But the desire to move as many people as quickly as possible to a new browser speaks volumes to where Microsoft thinks the Web is going. And they realize that it is not going in the direction that its older browsers had been taking it.

Further Updates will follow.

UPDATE: A colleague forwarded me this article on the release of Internet Explorer 8 to Windows Update. Effectively, you still have to go through the Web interface and agree to download the new browser. It’s not being pushed down onto Windows users through the automatic update built into the OS, no doubt to placate the glacially-slow IT departments I mentioned here.

From my IPV4 database, here are the the Registrar and Country statistics as of April 10 2009.

Since the last update, ARIN has crossed the 1.6B IPV4 address boundary, adding nearly 5M IPV4 Addresses. APNIC matched this growth by adding an additional 5M new addresses of its own.

Registrar      Number of IPV4 Adresses
---------      -----------------------
arin                    1,600,640,000
ripencc                   564,850,616
apnic                     528,362,496
lacnic                     79,931,136
afrinic                    21,526,272

The majority of the growth in APNIC continues to be driven by China, which added an additional 4M IPV4 addresses since March 14.

Country                                     Number of IPV4 Adresses
------------------------------------------  -----------------------
UNITED STATES                                            1472741888
CHINA                                                     191119104
JAPAN                                                     152412672
EUROPEAN UNION                                            114155680
GERMANY                                                    85174424
CANADA                                                     75846144
KOREA, REPUBLIC OF                                         72142592
UNITED KINGDOM                                             70675288
FRANCE                                                     68370880
AUSTRALIA                                                  36573184
ITALY                                                      32202432
BRAZIL                                                     29754880
TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA                                  24680704
RUSSIAN FEDERATION                                         24529224
SPAIN                                                      21794976
MEXICO                                                     21504000
NETHERLANDS                                                21290792
SWEDEN                                                     18982304
INDIA                                                      18285568
SOUTH AFRICA                                               14009344
POLAND                                                     13869704
TURKEY                                                     10417600
DENMARK                                                     9281632
FINLAND                                                     8932864
ROMANIA                                                     8640512
SWITZERLAND                                                 8249320
HONG KONG                                                   8206848
NORWAY                                                      7425584
AUSTRIA                                                     7290592
ARGENTINA                                                   7239424
INDONESIA                                                   6997248
VIETNAM                                                     6707456
BELGIUM                                                     6412416
NEW ZEALAND                                                 6115072
CZECH REPUBLIC                                              6040960
UKRAINE                                                     5507904
THAILAND                                                    4743936
CHILE                                                       4731136
PORTUGAL                                                    4473952
SINGAPORE                                                   4410880
COLOMBIA                                                    4261632
IRELAND                                                     4203680
MALAYSIA                                                    4147456
PHILIPPINES                                                 4070656
ISRAEL                                                      3949760
GREECE                                                      3834624
HUNGARY                                                     3716480
VENEZUELA                                                   3693056
BULGARIA                                                    3334912
EGYPT                                                       2731008
SAUDI ARABIA                                                2703616
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES                                        2286848
LITHUANIA                                                   2009216
IRAN, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF                                   1894400
PERU                                                        1715968
PAKISTAN                                                    1637632
CROATIA                                                     1623136
SLOVAKIA                                                    1611520
COSTA RICA                                                  1502208
LATVIA                                                      1384448
SLOVENIA                                                    1277952
PANAMA                                                      1130240
MONTENEGRO                                                  1083648
ESTONIA                                                     1021464

As China’s Internet growth continues, the number of addresses assigned to ISPs in that nation will continue to grow. However, it is unlikely that China will equal or exceed the US mainly due to the movement to mobile devices, which will be managed using private IP space rather than public IPs.

In the 10 days since its public release, MSIE8 has made a run up the charts. Courtesy of the great folks at StatCounter and their public analytics data, this growing browser share for MSIE8 can be easily followed.

In the US, prior to its release, MSIE8 RC1 was in sixth position behind even the old battleship Firefox 2.0, but ahead of Chrome 1.0.

In the week following its release, MSIE has quickly surpassed Firefox 2.0 browser share in the US. I am not really sure who these Firefox 2.0 users are, but they and the MSIE6 users must be found and encouraged to immediately upgrade.

The values for the first week don’t tell the entire story. As it enters its second week of general availability, MSIE8 continues to increase its share of the browser market, moving into fourth place in StatCounters US stats, overtaking Safari 3.2.

What does t his mean? While it still has a long way to go before it comes close to approaching even the dinosaur, MSIE6, it has to be said that this growth in MSIE8 browser share has occurred without the use of Windows Update. People are making a conscious decision to switch to and use MSIE8.

Site and application designers will need to take heed – MSIE8 compatibility initiatives will have to be in place yesterday rather than some vague time in the future.

Using the visitor trending data collected and shared by StatCounter, I have undertaken a general analysis of browser distribution by global region. These metrics are collected using the embedded tags that StatCounter customers embed on their site to collect visitor metrics for their own use.

US data shows that MSIE 7.0 is in a dominant position, with Firefox 3.0 in the 25% range of market share. This trend extends into the North American data, which is heavily influenced by the US trend.

MSIE 8.0, still reports a lower distribution than Firefox 2.0. This data is most likely based on the usage of MSIE 8.0 RC1 version, as MSIE 8.0 was only released in GA last week. It is highly probable that these stats will change in the very near future with the release of MSIE 8.0 to Windows Update.

In the EU, where fear and loathing of Microsoft runs deep and true, Firefox 3.0 is approaching parity with MSIE 7.0. Also, the perennially favoured native son Opera makes a very strong showing with their 9.6 release.

Asia is a Web designers nightmare, with MSIE 6.0 continuing to be the most reported browser. This is concerning, not simply for design reasons, but for web compliance reasons. Effectively Asia has throttled Web development to an old warhorse, but to such a degree that there must be some overriding advantage to using this browser.

As an example, the statistical comparison of four Asia nations is broken out below. We’ll start with Japan where MSIE 7.0 has a clear lead in the statistics.

However, when China (People’s Republic), India, and South Korea are added into the analysis, the pull towards MSIE 6.0 is massive.

This trend needs to be studied in greater detail in order to understand why MSIE 6.0 is so popular. Is it because of licensing? Continued use of Windows 2000? Compromised computers? The data doesn’t provide any clear or compelling reason for this trend.

Moving to Oceania shows a return to the trend of MSIE 7.0 being the predominant browser with Firefox in second place, with these two browsers showing a substantial lead over the remaining field.

South America sees MSIE 7.0 as having the largest market share, followed by MSIE 6.0 and Firefox 3.0. Effectively there are no other browsers with substantial market share at present.

These statistics show that the three most dominant browser platforms by market share are the two MSIE platforms followed by Firefox 3.0. This is likely to change with the MSIE 8.0 GA last week and its predicted release to the masses via Windows Update in the near future.

However, the release of MSIE 8.0 may not be as exponential as is predicted. Corporate IT policies, which have been slow to embrace MSIE 7.0, are likely not going to make a giant leap to MSIE 8.0 overnight. Adoption among the general population will also depend on the ability of existing Web applications to adapt to a more standards-compliant browser platform.

Noticeably absent from most of these statistics is Safari in a position to challenge the three leading browsers. This indicates that even hardcore Mac users continue to use Firefox as their primary Web application and browsing platform. StatCounter backs this up by indicating that within their data, 8.36% of visitors from the USA were on Macs, while 3.15% of visitors used Safari.

Trends to watch in the near future:

• New browser releases (Firefox 3.1, Safari 4.0) and their effect on browser distribution
• Uptake of MSIE 8.0 once it is released via Windows Update
• Browser distribution is Asia

On a daily basis, I update the Geographic IP database that I created many years ago. Although not as powerful as some of the commercially available Geographic databases, it has more than served my purposes over the years.

One of the benefits of collecting this data is being able to extract substantial metrics on the distribution of IPV4 addresses. This post is the latest in a series of descriptions of the distribution of addresses at the moment.

Here are the Registrar Stats for IPV4 addresses as of March 14 2009.

The ARIN IPV4 address space (which includes the US) is still the largest by far, with nearly 3 times the allocated IPV4 addresses of the two next largest registrars, RIPE and APNIC. The dominance of the US is even more noticeable in the IPV4 addresses by Country table.

Belying its growing importance on the Internet stage, China has grown from fourth place in the first of these analyses to second place in this study. However, it still has a long way to go before it catches up with the US.

An interesting concept that comes out of this data is that China is making do with substantially fewer public IPV4 addresses than the US is. This means that they have wholeheartedly embraced IPV6 (unlikely) or are using the private IP space for most communications.

In the first part of this series, using Web performance measurements to generate new customers was the topic. This article focuses on using the same data to keep the customers you have, and make them believe in the value of your service.

Proving the Point

Getting a customer is the exciting and glamorous work. Resources are often drawn from far and wide in an organization to win over a prospect and make them a customer.

Once the deal is done, the day-to-day business of making the customer believe that they are getting what they paid for is the job of the ongoing benchmarking measurements. CDNs and third-party services need to prove that they are delivering the goods, and this can only be done by an agreed upon measurement metric.

Some people leap right into an SLA / SLO discussion. As a Web performance professional, I can tell you that there are few SLAs that are effective, and ever fewer that are enforceable.

Start with what you can prove. Was the performance that was shown me during the pre-sales process a fluke, or does it represent the true level of service that I am getting for my money?

Measure Often and Everywhere

The Web performance world has become addicted to the relatively clean and predictable measurements that originate from high-quality backbone measurement locations. This perspective can provide an slightly unrealistic view of the Web world.

How many times have you heard from the people around you about site X (maybe this is your site) behaving badly or unpredictably from home connections? Why, when you examine the Web performance data from the backbone, doesn’t this show up?

Web connections to the home are unpredicatble, unregulated, and have no QoS target. It is definitely best effort. This is especially true in the US, where there is no incentive (some would say that there is a barrier) to delivering the best quality performance to the home. But that is where the money is.

As a service provider, you better be willing to show that your service is able to surmount the obstacles and deliver Web performance advantages at the Last Mile and the Backbone.

Don’t ever base SLAs on Last Mile data – this is Web performance insanity. But be ready to prove that you can deliver high quality performance everywhere.

Show me the data

As a customer of your service, I expect you to show me the measurement that you’re are collecting. I expect you to be honest with me when you encounter a problem. I do not want to hear/see your finger-pointing, especially when you try and push the blame for any performance issues back to me.

As a service provider, you live and die by the Web performance data. And if you see something in the data, not related to your business, but that could make my site faster and better, tell me about it.

Remember that partnership you sold me on during the Customer Generation phase? Show it to me now. If you help me get better, this will be added to plus column on the decision chart at renewal time, when your competitor comes knocking on my door with a lower price and Web performance data that shows how much you suck.

Shit Happens. Fess up.

The beauty of Web performance measurement is that your customers can replicate exactly the same measurements that you run on their behalf. And, they may actually measure things that you hadn’t thought about.

And sure as shooting, they will show up at a meeting with your team one day with data that shows that your service FUBAR‘d on a massive scale.

It’s the Internet. Bad shit happens on the Internet. I’ve seen it.

If you can show them that you know about the problem, explain what caused it, how you resolved it, and how you are working to prevent it, good.

Better: Call them when the shit happens. Let them know that you know about the problem and that you have a crack team of Web performance commandos deployed worldwide to resolve the problem in non-relativistic time. Blog it. Tweet it. Put a big ‘ol email in their inbox. Call your pimary contact, and your secondary contact, and your tertiary contact.

Fess up. You can only hide so much before your customers start talking. And the last thing your want prospects seeing is your existing customers talking smack about your service.

Summary

Web performance measurement doesn’t go away the second you close the deal. In fact, the process has only just begun. It is a crazy, competitive world out there. Be prepared to show that you’re the best and that you aren’t perfect every single day.

Flying back from SFO after a long and frustrating week introduced me to a new rule that UAL gate staff have been asked to start enforcing. Apparently, my Premier status, which I realize is the lowest of the frequent-flyer levels, means even less now than it did in the past.

Over my career, I had settled on UAL as my carrier of choice. Flying out of SFO for the first 4.5 years in the US meant that UAL was the primary choice to get anywhere. After a while, I became a devoted UAL fan when I realized that in this day of limited overhead bin room having Premier status got you the vaunted 1 on your boarding pass.

I could accept that First-Class and 1K flyers got to board ahead of me – hell, they’re on a first-name basis with most of the flight crews. This didn’t bother me because I knew that I got to board next.

Friday, that changed.

Apparently, the rule is that Premier Executive now rates between the Red Doormat Club and the Premier status flyers.

I have commented in the past about how people who travel a great deal assume too much from their airline frequent-flyer plans. I do not want to become one of these people. All I ask is that this single privilege I had grown accustomed to having be re-instated. I know my travel money doesn’t have a huge effect on your bottom-line, but I stuck with you through thick and thin.

But now this is a really thick move, and my patience has grown thin.

In the last 24 hours, thanks to the help of some willing volunteers, GrabPERF has seen the addition of three new measurement locations:

• Dallas, TX (USA)
• Virginia (USA)
• London, UK

All of these location have been graciously provided by the team at e-planning.

Thanks to all of you who volunteer your machines and bandwidth for this project.

As always, we are looking for as more measurement locations. It would be great if we could get some data from the Asia-Pacific region.

Being a Canadian in the United States for the last nine years has been an interesting adventure, to say the least. Although our nations are neighbours, there can be two more different approaches to the same problem so close to each other.

I can’t claim to be an expert on how Canada processes new immigrants, but I can say that it has to be better than what has happened in the US.

Nine years ago, I started out on the NAFTA Free-Trade visa, the TN-1. This is a non-immigration visa, which is restrictive in the occupations that you can work in, but essentially allows highly-skilled Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans to work in the free trade zone, a term I use very loosely in this context.

In 2001, my status was migrated by my previous employer to an H1-B. This is a much more formal visa and is used for skilled workers from around the world. It is also infamous for its quota system, and is the bane of most (if not all) high-tech firms who insist on recruiting the best talent from around the world to work in the Unuted States.

In some respects, while the off-shoring trend that was so big a concern a few years back (still?) is founded on a number of different economic realities, the driving force was the restrictive nature of the H1-B visa. I encountered a version of this when I changed employers and transferred my H1-B from employer A to employer B. When I did this, I could not leave the US, for any reason, until I had my new H1-B without forfeiting the entire process.

One of the conditions I had for switching employers was that employer B would start the Green Card process for me and my family. This process alone has taken 3.5 years, and from what I can tell, being an employment-based application from a Canadian means that I haven’t had to wait nearly as long as some of the people who apply under other circumstances or from “less friendly” nations.

This process is approaching (we hope) its final phase, as there is talk from the people assisting us that there is a chance that we may be processed through the final stages in late 2008 or early 2009. But, as with all things related to this process, this is still very much speculative.

Whew.

So, as a citizen of the United States reading this, you are likely saying “So what?”, or “How does this affect me?”. Frankly, it doesn’t. But, in a fundamental way, it does.

As a nation built almost completely on immigration, the United States has become increasing isolationist, especially in its immigration policies. Mostly at a political level. Where the conflict appears to be developing is between the political agenda and the economic needs of the US economy. US firms are reliant on importing the best and the brightest from around the world. These same firms are now finding increasing resistance from these highly-skilled employees who are looking at the current state of the US economy and the incredibly restrictive immigration criteria, and choosing to walk away, or choose other more lucrative and less restrictive opportunities.

As a person involved in this process, I can say that up until late last year, when I recieved my EAD, I was in effect an indentured serf, beholden to the company for which I worked, which none of the options or flexibility that my US colleagues had available to them.

I own a house. My children go to school in the town where I own my house. I pay US, not Canadian, taxes. I pay property tax.

However, in the eyes of the United States government, I am considered “three-fifths of a person”. A person bound to this country but not of this country.

The truly American among you may say “Shut up and become a citizen”. I chose not to. I have chosen to retain my personal Canadian Identity, those things that I hold dear that separate Canadian and Americans. I retain my Canadian passport. My youngest son holds dual-citizenship.

I have chosen to make a life in the United States. However, the process that I have been involved in does not allow me to recommend this path to any other Canadians.

To other Canadians, I say: Stay home. Make Canada the best it can be. Make it a truly integrated player in the Global Economy.

To the United States, I say: Wake up. Your destiny has come, and gone. And the way you treat your immigrants is a clear demonstration of that.

Some have said that the United States is a fading empire, most-often compared to the Roman Empire. However, as this piece in the LA Times states, even an ancient empire, in its fading glory, understood how you become great: You become more than the sum of your parts.