Yesterday Silver Peak hosted a great live chat on Twitter focusing on the theme of #HolidayInternetWeather. We had plenty of questions around Internet congestion and latency for our special guest, Dave Strickler (@IntWeather), of InternetWeatherMap.com, and he had lots to say on the subject. We hope you were able to follow along live, but if you weren’t able to catch us yesterday, here are the highlights of our Q&A:
Q1: .@IntWeather What led you to create http://t.co/wdksCKQhei?#HolidayInternetWeather
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
It started because I when I ran an email company, we would see delays in email that we could… #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
only classify as internet latency, #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
but we had no way of proving this in real-time. IWM solves this problem. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Q2: @IntWeather What kind of problems were you seeing? #HolidayInternetWeather
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
Lots of delayed emails between servers with no logical explanation. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
So how did IWM help you on identify the problem #HolidayInternetWeather
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
IWM allowed me to see the latency that was causing delays. It revealed the lurking mystery. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Q3: What sort of lurking mysteries are you discovering on IWM today?#HolidayInternetWeather
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
Many flakey/overloaded routers in unexpected places that give sporadic performance, causing lurching delays. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Can you give an example or two of the where the potholes in the Internet currently lie?#HolidayInternetWeather?
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
Lately Turkey & Iran are sluggish. In the US, from LA to Sydney are often slow, but that's often due to satellites. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Q5. Talk a little about some of the worst conditions you’ve seen, in terms of congestion/latency #HolidayInternetWeather
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
A while back I saw massive outages one day that were so bad I assumed there was a flaw in our software… #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Turns out it was a huge outage at Amazon that affected thousands of websites around the world, displayed on our map. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Q6: What causes those poor network performance conditions? #HolidayInternetWeather
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
Stress on existing networks. It can be as simple as a botched router upgrade, to… #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
…physical problems like real weather, or even power problems. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
The key is to understanding most are beyond your control, but you can address them with your ISP, especially… #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
…if you have the data to prove it. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Q7: .@IntWeather Are things getting worse, better or staying the same for Internet traffic? #HolidayInternetWeather
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
They’re getting better, but slowly. A big change has been the use of “intelligent routing” which… #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
…routes traffic over different paths to smooth the overall latency. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
But it’s not a silver bullet, and big delays still happen each day. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Q8: .@IntWeather What do you think the reasons are for these trends in Internet traffic? #HolidayInternetWeather
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
Some are random, but others are cascading problems from other locations. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Then here are seasonal changes like holiday buying, and of course hackers & spammers tend to clog things up. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Q8. What implications do you think #HolidayInternetWeather has for IT managers expecting to run enterprise applications across the ‘Net?
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
In the Cloud, shared routers could mean a retailer's traffic slows your network down as well #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
… when your network slows, so do your applications. And that's never a good situation to be in. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Q9: What sort of network patterns do you typically see around the big Dec. shopping days? #HolidayInternetWeather
— Silver Peak (@SilverPeak) November 19, 2014
Retailers get hit hard, but expect it, so they beef up in any way they can, often by decentralizing their servers. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Buying often mimics brick-and-morter patterns, but tends to be heavy off-hours when the Internet is quieter. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
Look for delays in smaller retailers that can’t easily scale to meet demand, and are often overwhelmed. #HolidayInternetWeather
— Internet Weather Map (@IntWeather) November 19, 2014
A big thank you to Dave Strickler, and everyone who could join us for this inaugural live Twitter chat! Don’t forget to follow us here on the WAN Speak blog — as well as on Twitter — for more insights on #HolidayInternetWeather in the days ahead. And don’t forget to enter our #HolidayInternetWeather Twitter sweepstakes — simply #TweetYourPing to us and you could win a GoPro camera!
