In 2004-2005, as a lark, I created my own Web performance measurement system, using PERL, PHP and MySQL. In August 2005, I managed to figure out how to include remote agents.

I dubbed it…GrabPERF. An odd name, but an amalgamation of “Grab” and “Performance” that made sense to my mind at the time. I also never though that it would go beyond my house, a couple of basement servers, and a cable modem.

In the intervening three years, I have managed to:

• scale the system to handle over 250 individual measurements
• involve nine remote measurement locations
• move the system to the Technorati datacenter
• provide key operational measurement data to system visitors

Although the system lives in the Technorati datacenter and is owned by them, I provide the majority of the day-to-day maintenance on a volunteer basis, if only to try and keep my limited coding skills up.

But this post is not about me. It’s about GrabPERF.

Thanks to the help of a number of volunteers, I have measurement locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC, Boston, Portugal, Germany and Argentina.

While this is a good spread, I am still looking to gather volunteers who can host a GrabPERF measurement location. The areas where GrabPERF has the most need are:

• Asia-Pacific
• South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh)
• UK and Continental Europe
• Central Europe, including the ancestral homeland of Polska

It would also be great to get a funky logo for the system, so if you are a graphic designer and want to create a cool GrabPERF logo, let me know.

The current measurement system requires Linux, cURL and a few add-on Perl modules. I am sure that I could work on other operating systems, I just haven’t had the opportunity to experiment.

If you or your organization can help, please contact me using the GrabPERF contact form.

I know that I have been bad at blogging news about GrabPERF, but today there is some. In the last two weeks, we have added two measurement locations: Washington DC AOL and Argentina LaNacion.

Thanks to Carson Evans of AOL, and Jose Falvo and Leonardo Lancellotta of LaNacion for helping out with the installation process.

After a few month hiatus, I am starting to code for GrabPERF again. I need to exercise my brain; as I am a hobbyist code mangler, I have to take on a project every now and then to keep my not-so-l33t skillz honed.

The change to the agent is one of efficiency. The current production agent opens two database connections to run tests: one to retrieve the test configuration data; the other to insert the results of the tests. This means I loop through one set of database query results while doing inserts inside the loop on a second database connection.

This is stupid.

The new code opens a single connection to the database, retrieves the test configuration, dumps the results to an array of arrays, then inserts the data on the same connection. This is more efficient, as I use persistent connections and compression to MySQL to improve performance.

I have this running as TEST AGENT 1 from the Technorati #2 site.

Let me know if you see any madness…outside of Washington DC, and specifically with GrabPERF.

Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, PERL, MySQL

A response to the FEC chairman’s C|Net interview, which I commented on yesterday.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press Contact: Mark Glaze
202-271-0982

Statement of the Campaign Legal Center

Setting the Record Straight: There is No FEC Threat to the Internet

Washington, D.C. — In a recent interview with CNET, Federal Election Commissioner Brad Smith claimed that as a result of new campaign laws and and a recent court decision, online news organizations and bloggers may soon wake up to find their activities regulated by government bureaucrats. That would indeed be troubling, if it were true. Fortunately, Mr. Smith – an avowed opponent of most campaign finance regulation – is simply wrong.

The issue the FEC – and the courts – are grappling with is how to deal with online political ads by candidates and parties, and with paid advertising that is coordinated with those groups. As the Internet becomes a vital new force in politics, we are simply going through a natural transition as we work out how, and when, to apply longstanding campaign finance principles – designed to fight corruption – to political expenditures on the Web. Mr. Smith has advocated an extreme position that politicians, parties and outside groups can pay for Internet advertising with “soft money” – unlimited, unregulated checks from corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals. A federal court rightly rejected that position, saying that the new ban on soft money in our elections obviously applies to Internet advertising, too.

These laws are decidedly NOT aimed at online press, commentary or blogs, and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 was carefully drafted to exclude them. The FEC has now been asked to initiate a rulemaking to work out how to deal with different kinds of Internet political expenditures, and there will be plenty of opportunity for public commentary. The CommissionÂ’s duty then will be to distinguish candidate and party expenditures, and coordinated independent expenditures, on the Internet (which should be subject to campaign finance law like any other expenditures) from activity by bloggers, Internet news services and citizens acting on their own that should remain unregulated, free and robust.

Mr. SmithÂ’s comments are obviously designed to instigate a cyberspace furor to pressure Congress to reverse the court decision requiring that paid political ads on the Internet should be treated like any other paid advertisements. Mr. Smith has a right to try to win converts to his anti-regulatory philosophy, but he has an obligation to present the issues fairly and forthrightly, and his comments to CNET fail both tests.

For more information on why the sky is not falling, see a chapter on the history of the FEC regulation and deregulation of the Internet by Trevor Potter, former FEC Chairman and president of the Campaign Legal Center, in the Brookings InstitutionÂ’s New Campaign Finance Sourcebook at http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/gs/cf/sourcebk01/InternetChap9.pdf

For the relevant court decision, please check out the Campaign Legal CenterÂ’s website at http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/attachment.html/Opinion.pdf?id=1257

For information on the future FEC rulemaking, see the agencyÂ’s website at www.fec.gov.

# # #

1736 19th St NW
Washington DC 20009

T 202.232.6222
C 202.271.0982
F 202.232.3040

I post this verbatim. For more info, contact Mark Glaze