Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU!09998WAS%MSU
From: 09998WAS%MSU@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU ("Bill.Simpson")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: IBM VM TCP/IP performance (part 1)
Message-ID: <9008231604.AA03073@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 23 Aug 90 16:04:27 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 50
X-Unparsable-Date: Thursday, 23 August 1990 9:36am ET

A month ago, I wrote a very short message to this group concerning
NIS.NSF.NET, saying "It certainly has a *terrible* implementation
of TCP/IP."  I quickly received the following private message:

> From: "Bill Rubin" <RUBIN%YKTVMZ.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
> To:   09998was@ibm.cl.msu.edu
> Subject: Re: How to get RFC documents
>
> I am probably asking for trouble here, but would you like to tell me
> exactly what you find so distasteful about our TCP/IP product?  We have
> a very large number of customers who I believe are very satisfied with
> it.  If you don't like our anonymous FTP implementation, I can believe
> that, it's nothing to be proud of, but it's better than nothing, which
> is what we offered before we added the feature.  Perhaps you should
> have just said we have a *terrible* implementation of anonymous FTP.

Well, I spent about 15 hours benchmarking NIS.NSF.NET against other
machines on the internet, carefully documenting the packet traces,
and passing my observations on to IBM.  I did this at my own expense,
as a matter of curiousity, because I thought that the folks who were
sending the messages were "real programmers" who were really interested
in getting it right (a Jay Elinsky was also involved).

Instead, my messages were sent to Merit, the operator of NSF.NET,
causing a political uproar.  I personally do not appreciate finger pointing
as a substitute for action, and in this case it was grossly unjustified.

Let's keep the record straight: the folks at Merit *are* "real programmers".
In the past, when I have uncovered a problem they have stayed up until
5:30 in the morning tracking it down (and I suspect without overtime).
The internet has been vastly improved during the tenure of their operation
of the NSF net.

The NIS.NSF.NET hardware was contributed by IBM, and I understand
that the software is the latest IBM release.  My benchmark was carefully
conducted for a direct comparison of the TCP/IP implementations,
under the worst possible circumstances to make implementation flaws
stand out clearly.  The failures demonstrated are plainly of the
host, and not of the environment.

As to the "very satisfied" customers, I will point out that MSU has
not yet installed the VM TCP/IP product, even though it came "free"
with other products.  And I occasionally read "IBMTCP-L" on bitnet.
'Nuf said.

On to the results....

Bill Simpson
    09998was@ibm.cl.msu.edu
    09998was@msu.bitnet