This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Bill de hÓra.
Original Post: Typekey: Grand Central Web
Feed Title: Bill de hÓra
Feed URL: http://www.dehora.net/journal/atom.xml
Feed Description: FD85 1117 1888 1681 7689 B5DF E696 885C 20D8 21F8
From a performance standpoint, how many times do you get a failure when you ping weblogs.com or blo.gs or even movabletype.org? Blogspot or TypePad users, have any problems accessing your service? Have you all tried to ping two Trackback-enabled TypePad weblog posts with the same entry, and found it has failed? How about you folks that link to Amazon or Google or Sitemeter or blogrolling.com on your pages -- ever notice how slow your page loads? - Shelley Powers Oh sure, we've noticed. But here's the thing, the web, despite being the the most successful distributed system ever created, is still quite centralized. The centralization revolves around two things. The domain name: the domain name is the bit between http:// and the next /, (dubyadubyadubya-summink). ICANN is a central body that distributes rights to resell domain names which you can then rent for a limited time. You don't really own your domain name, but you are accorded some rights through renting. Technically the analog is DNS, the domain name system which links IP addresses to domains. DNS is prety neat tech, but it's centralized and managed to a large degree in a proprietary fashion. Some day, those handful of root name servers are going to be taken down and... well you don't want to know. The server: Classically on the web or any other client-server style network, you connect to a server (another machine) and have the content downloaded to your machine. On the web, that domain name has to resove to an IP address, which means a single computer. If too many people connect that computer will be overloaded. But, the physical toplogy is different. Underneath that wafer thin conceptual layer you and I call the web, there is big technical mojo. It consists of machines that cache pages so you don't always connect to that server you thought you were, load balanced clusters of machines acting as though they are one server, and entire networks of geographically astute server farms called content delivery networks (which are also proprietary). The single stupidest, unmojo part? Probably your browser. Those of us that admire the web tend not to bang on too much about these modern wonders which keep things running - we know it's all a workaround. Instead we like to say that HTTP has caching and scale designed in. The design of the web is what matters. Right? Things degrade with HTTPS. A HTTPS session requires your computer create a stable one time link to another computer making clustering more complicated and eluding caches altogether. Notice that a site like Amazon doesn't put you into a HTTPS session until it has to. Shelley again: All of these are dependent on centralized systems, and as we have found in every single instance of centralization and weblogs, they don't scale. Every single instance. I remember people saying Hotmail would never scale. Then they said Google wouldn't scale (well, I still say that). Making this stuff scale is expensive, but it's doable to a point - yet the web has no really good architectural answer to what most of us call the Slashdot Effect (or in security jargon, distributed denial of service). I don't like the Typekey solution either; commercially and technically it's inelegant. But until we come up an alternative architectural model or make PKI usable, these models will continue to be proposed. For what it's worth I think Moveable Type with Typkey are ultimately targetting corporates (who tend to be able to live with centrality) using blogs behind the firewall or across firewalls with partners. [streets: fit but you know it]...
Previous Topic
