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Posted to dev@httpd.apache.org by "Jason A. Dour" <ja...@bcc.louisville.edu> on 1997/06/13 02:22:24 UTC
Final Draft of PC Week Rebuttal...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Unless I get some -1s, I'm sending this thing very early tomorrow morning.
Alexei! Did you want your name on it? I included it since you had some
input, but you didn't specifically say yes or no...
In the past, the magazine calls the author to verify information for
publication. I'll gladly handle this and take the call, unless someone
really minds. Again, unless I hear major objections, I'm sending this
~6AM tomorrow...
=====
It's always pleasing to see your product praised in print. That's why the
Apache Group was at first happy with the positive press it received in
Michael Moeller's cover story, "FORT APACHE" (PCWeek, June 9, 1997) and
Jim Rapoza's related article, "IT'S NOT EASY. SO WHAT?" (PCWeek, pg18,
June 9, 1997). We were dismayed, however, by a statement made by Mr.
Moeller and by what we feel to be a misleading account of Apache's
performance in the benchmark graph from PC Week Labs.
Mr. Moeller's article did a good job of explaining Apache's strengths and
popularity -- until the last column. He writes, "Anyone unfamiliar with
hard-core Unix programming will not be able to get Apache running, said
users." To this statement, we must take strong exception. Of the
hundreds of thousands of installations of Apache, how many does Mr.
Moeller believe to be administered by "hard-core Unix programmers?"
Apache end-users are a diverse bunch: from computer novices, to system
administrators of varying ability and station, to Mr. Moeller's
"hard-core" example, to everyday people who need good solid web server
software. Mr. Moeller's "quote" from undisclosed "users" is a
disappointing low-point for an otherwise well crafted article.
As for the benchmark on page 18, we must wonder about the validity of the
claims it made. Microsoft's IIS is shown overall to triple the
performance of two versions of Apache. These figures are hard to believe.
Internal testing as well as repeated user feedback indicates that Apache's
performance meets or far exceeds any of the competition's. We believe the
reported numbers would be much different if the Apache configuration were
even minimally optimized to meet the benchmark's performance metric of
requests-per-second.
The Apache Group would welcome and appreciate having an opportunity
to work with PC Week Labs to verify and possibly correct these
benchmark results. We would like to provide a configuration that
would be more appropriate to the platform and benchmark conditions
while remaining relatively unbiased toward the specific tests. If
it can be demonstrated to our satisfaction that the test environment
was fair across the various servers, we will confirm the fact.
Sincerely,
Jason A. Dour <ja...@bcc.louisville.edu>
Ken Coar <co...@decus.org>
Sameer Parekh <sa...@c2.net>
Ben Laurie <be...@gonzo.ben.algroup.co.uk>
Alexei Kosut <ak...@nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us>
Dean Gaudet <dg...@arctic.org>
The Apache Group
=====
Jason
# Jason A. Dour <ja...@bcc.louisville.edu> 1101
# Programmer Analyst II; Department of Radiation Oncology; Univ. of Lou.
# Finger for URLs, PGP public key, geek code, PJ Harvey info, et cetera.
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Re: Final Draft of PC Week Rebuttal...
Posted by Chuck Murcko <ch...@topsail.org>.
You might add that I did speak to Ken Wold at ZD labs and told him the
Best 5 Lines to change in his config before running the benchmark.
Jason A. Dour wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> Unless I get some -1s, I'm sending this thing very early tomorrow morning.
>
> Alexei! Did you want your name on it? I included it since you had some
> input, but you didn't specifically say yes or no...
>
> In the past, the magazine calls the author to verify information for
> publication. I'll gladly handle this and take the call, unless someone
> really minds. Again, unless I hear major objections, I'm sending this
> ~6AM tomorrow...
>
> =====
> It's always pleasing to see your product praised in print. That's why the
> Apache Group was at first happy with the positive press it received in
> Michael Moeller's cover story, "FORT APACHE" (PCWeek, June 9, 1997) and
> Jim Rapoza's related article, "IT'S NOT EASY. SO WHAT?" (PCWeek, pg18,
> June 9, 1997). We were dismayed, however, by a statement made by Mr.
> Moeller and by what we feel to be a misleading account of Apache's
> performance in the benchmark graph from PC Week Labs.
>
> Mr. Moeller's article did a good job of explaining Apache's strengths and
> popularity -- until the last column. He writes, "Anyone unfamiliar with
> hard-core Unix programming will not be able to get Apache running, said
> users." To this statement, we must take strong exception. Of the
> hundreds of thousands of installations of Apache, how many does Mr.
> Moeller believe to be administered by "hard-core Unix programmers?"
> Apache end-users are a diverse bunch: from computer novices, to system
> administrators of varying ability and station, to Mr. Moeller's
> "hard-core" example, to everyday people who need good solid web server
> software. Mr. Moeller's "quote" from undisclosed "users" is a
> disappointing low-point for an otherwise well crafted article.
>
> As for the benchmark on page 18, we must wonder about the validity of the
> claims it made. Microsoft's IIS is shown overall to triple the
> performance of two versions of Apache. These figures are hard to believe.
> Internal testing as well as repeated user feedback indicates that Apache's
> performance meets or far exceeds any of the competition's. We believe the
> reported numbers would be much different if the Apache configuration were
> even minimally optimized to meet the benchmark's performance metric of
> requests-per-second.
>
> The Apache Group would welcome and appreciate having an opportunity
> to work with PC Week Labs to verify and possibly correct these
> benchmark results. We would like to provide a configuration that
> would be more appropriate to the platform and benchmark conditions
> while remaining relatively unbiased toward the specific tests. If
> it can be demonstrated to our satisfaction that the test environment
> was fair across the various servers, we will confirm the fact.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Jason A. Dour <ja...@bcc.louisville.edu>
> Ken Coar <co...@decus.org>
> Sameer Parekh <sa...@c2.net>
> Ben Laurie <be...@gonzo.ben.algroup.co.uk>
> Alexei Kosut <ak...@nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us>
> Dean Gaudet <dg...@arctic.org>
>
> The Apache Group
> =====
>
> Jason
> # Jason A. Dour <ja...@bcc.louisville.edu> 1101
> # Programmer Analyst II; Department of Radiation Oncology; Univ. of Lou.
> # Finger for URLs, PGP public key, geek code, PJ Harvey info, et cetera.
>
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>
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--
chuck
Chuck Murcko
The Topsail Group, West Chester PA USA
chuck@topsail.org
Re: Final Draft of PC Week Rebuttal...
Posted by Marc Slemko <ma...@worldgate.com>.
Sure, looks good to me. I kept avoiding sending anything because I
couldn't say anything but "I sez it ain't what you sez"... but I suppose
that is all 99% of everything is. Sigh.
On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Jason A. Dour wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> Unless I get some -1s, I'm sending this thing very early tomorrow morning.
>
> Alexei! Did you want your name on it? I included it since you had some
> input, but you didn't specifically say yes or no...
>
> In the past, the magazine calls the author to verify information for
> publication. I'll gladly handle this and take the call, unless someone
> really minds. Again, unless I hear major objections, I'm sending this
> ~6AM tomorrow...
>
> =====
> It's always pleasing to see your product praised in print. That's why the
> Apache Group was at first happy with the positive press it received in
> Michael Moeller's cover story, "FORT APACHE" (PCWeek, June 9, 1997) and
> Jim Rapoza's related article, "IT'S NOT EASY. SO WHAT?" (PCWeek, pg18,
> June 9, 1997). We were dismayed, however, by a statement made by Mr.
> Moeller and by what we feel to be a misleading account of Apache's
> performance in the benchmark graph from PC Week Labs.
>
> Mr. Moeller's article did a good job of explaining Apache's strengths and
> popularity -- until the last column. He writes, "Anyone unfamiliar with
> hard-core Unix programming will not be able to get Apache running, said
> users." To this statement, we must take strong exception. Of the
> hundreds of thousands of installations of Apache, how many does Mr.
> Moeller believe to be administered by "hard-core Unix programmers?"
> Apache end-users are a diverse bunch: from computer novices, to system
> administrators of varying ability and station, to Mr. Moeller's
> "hard-core" example, to everyday people who need good solid web server
> software. Mr. Moeller's "quote" from undisclosed "users" is a
> disappointing low-point for an otherwise well crafted article.
>
> As for the benchmark on page 18, we must wonder about the validity of the
> claims it made. Microsoft's IIS is shown overall to triple the
> performance of two versions of Apache. These figures are hard to believe.
> Internal testing as well as repeated user feedback indicates that Apache's
> performance meets or far exceeds any of the competition's. We believe the
> reported numbers would be much different if the Apache configuration were
> even minimally optimized to meet the benchmark's performance metric of
> requests-per-second.
>
> The Apache Group would welcome and appreciate having an opportunity
> to work with PC Week Labs to verify and possibly correct these
> benchmark results. We would like to provide a configuration that
> would be more appropriate to the platform and benchmark conditions
> while remaining relatively unbiased toward the specific tests. If
> it can be demonstrated to our satisfaction that the test environment
> was fair across the various servers, we will confirm the fact.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Jason A. Dour <ja...@bcc.louisville.edu>
> Ken Coar <co...@decus.org>
> Sameer Parekh <sa...@c2.net>
> Ben Laurie <be...@gonzo.ben.algroup.co.uk>
> Alexei Kosut <ak...@nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us>
> Dean Gaudet <dg...@arctic.org>
>
> The Apache Group
> =====
>
>
> Jason
> # Jason A. Dour <ja...@bcc.louisville.edu> 1101
> # Programmer Analyst II; Department of Radiation Oncology; Univ. of Lou.
> # Finger for URLs, PGP public key, geek code, PJ Harvey info, et cetera.
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: 2.6.2
>
> iQCVAwUBM6CSw5o1JaC71RLxAQFghgP/QgVB5aUlJeD486ParUewuFaLdoQHsL5u
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> JnLw9CZbZqM=
> =Iaqm
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>