Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Linux

Bandwidth survey in Mauritius – Initialization

By 7 Comments

Thanks for your help for the bandwidth survey. Here are the URLs of files found in USA and in Europe:

1kb USA = https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/1k
1kb Europe = http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/1k

10kb USA = https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/10k
10kb Europe = http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/10k

100kb USA = https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/100k
100kb Europe = http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/100k

1000kb USA = https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/1000k
1000kb Europe = http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/1000k

I would like you to time the download of each in the morning (around 8:30), in the afternoon (around 16:30) and during the night (around 22:30). This will give 3 x 8 = 24 times every day. Please note that the times are only indicative. You are free to start a big earlier or later. I don’t think this will have a big impact on the results. As I mentioned, it would be great to do this from Monday 2 July to Sunday 8 July.

(Personally I intend to use “time wget URL” to time the download as this gives millisecond accuracy which is useful for the small files i.e. 1k and 10k. Windows users should use something equivalent, a download manager perhaps?)

Please send me the results as soon as you get the 22:30 results as I would like to start analyzing them as from day one. Don’t forget to tell me what kind of Internet connection you have…

Here is a small shell script to automate the downloads:

#!/bin/sh

time wget https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/1k
time wget http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/1k

time wget https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/10k
time wget http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/10k

time wget https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/100k
time wget http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/100k

time wget https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/1000k
time wget http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/1000k

I know it’s a lot of work. Thanks a lot for your help. The more people we get participating in this survey, the better the results will be!

Three great technical books

By 3 Comments

I’ve just discovered ProgrammingBooks.org and I find it great. I’m impatient to start contributing to it as soon as they solve their user signup problem as it is not working well presently.

In the meantime, here are three books I bought relatively recently and which I find excellent:

The second edition of Programming Ruby is extremely interesting to read (the first version is available freely online). It describes the Ruby programming language of course as well as its standard library. Ruby is an extremely expressive programming language as it allows the programmer to solve complex problems very easily. I’ve already written about my fascination with that programming language. The metaprogramming aspects of Ruby will blow your mind away!

Linux Kernel Development fully describes (and explains the rationale behind) the various subsystems found in the Linux 2.6 kernel. It’s one extremely complex and specialized subject that has been made simple thanks to the pedagogical talent of the author. Incidentally, my students have indirectly benefited from that book in the sense that I know a lot more about the kernel than before. Consequently I regularly ask them to investigate sections of the Linux kernel (e.g. the scheduler or the process creation mechanism) and write reports for me…

The third book is also another book that I’ve read cover to cover. The Inmates are Running the Asylum has an obscure title (at first) and it’s only when the author explains its meaning that you realize that this book is a gem. The Inmates are us, programmers. And the Asylum is the software that we are always trying to write. The point is that we, programmers, design the user interface of a software in order to please us and not the real end-user. Consequently, the software becomes difficult to use for the majority and therefore is not successful. The author argues that one should always use a goal-directed design approach. Incidentally, the author is the creator of Visual Basic but he does not like to use it to design user interfaces… I’ve already written on that.

Thibor is alive!

By 10 Comments

The kids were delighted that I bought something with “pointed ears” (I couldn’t explain the real purpose of those antennas to them…)

I finally got hold of my Linksys WRT54GL today. I connected it, did some preliminary tests with the Linksys firmware, confirmed that it did not work as a Wifi-Ethernet bridge out of the box, took a deep breath and started the flashing process with a new firmware developed by Thibor.

And it worked!

I promptly followed this to transform my WRT54GL into a brand new Wifi-Ethernet transparent bridge featuring a 4-port Ethernet switch!

The only thing that does not work is DHCP relaying. I had to assign static IPs to my PCs but this is a very very minor issue. Apart from that, the Linksys rocks and now I can browse the web from three different computers.

Life is cool :-)