{"id":121,"date":"2008-03-08T21:51:27","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T05:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/35.225.155.113\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/03\/08\/part_iii_the_analogy\/"},"modified":"2019-10-13T13:46:10","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T20:46:10","slug":"part-iii-the-analogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/03\/part-iii-the-analogy.html","title":{"rendered":"Part III: The Analogy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is the continuation of a story begun in &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/pdw.zoomshare.com\/index.shtml\/fd1855d8b0e1f1d6bfcd74472351334b_47a5130f.writeback\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Move<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/pdw.zoomshare.com\/index.shtml\/bfd074b61353218759e0284fc2139de1_47b70521.writeback\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">On Two Hours Sleep<\/a>&#8221; in which our heroes battle nefarious network gremlins in order to save <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zoomshare.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">zoomshare<\/a> from imploding under its own weight.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-0161564058640246\";\n\/* 468x60, created 3\/17\/09 *\/\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8731961173\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 468;\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\n\/\/ --><\/script><br \/>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The analogy has become a clich\u00e9 in a certain genres of television. It is usually found in the second or third act of a Science Fiction or <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Police_procedural\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Police Procedural<\/a> episode. In the scene the wickedly smart <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wilwheaton.typepad.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">boy genius engineer<\/a> or weird but likable lab technician explains to our hero some important, albeit technically laced, piece of information on which the plot moves on.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, for some unexplained reason the knowledge and experience of 20+ years of service has momentarily escaped the ship&#8217;s caption or police detective. Seeing that their <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Technobabble\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">technobabble<\/a> explanation has dazed and confused our hero, the boy genius launches into an analogy, to explain, in a non-technically way, what they just said, which of course in turn clues in the story&#8217;s audience. The dialog usually goes something like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Boy Genius: &#8220;Sir, if we change the matter &#8211; antimatter mix ratio in our flux capacitor we might be able to generate enough energy to create a wormhole in the space\/time continuum which will get us home in 10 minutes instead of 10,000 years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ship&#8217;s Caption: Puzzled Look<\/p>\n<p>Boy Genius: &#8220;Sir, if you think of this apple as space\/time&#8221; picks up an apple from the Caption&#8217;s desk and continues &#8220;and we are here on the surface&#8221; points to near side of apple &#8220;and home is here&#8221; points to far side of apple &#8220;normally we would have to travel the curvature of space\/time, the surface of this apple, a long distance to travel at less that light speed, to get home. But, if we can safely overload our engines we might be able to create a hole in space\/time, like a worm creating a hole in this apple, and burrow our way, cutting the distance we have to travel by a factor of several billion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ship&#8217;s Caption: Contemplates the situation and his options, then rises from his desk to take action &#8220;Make it so!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Our Analogy<\/strong><br \/>\nThe Internet is like a highway, a large bi-directional superhighway. Hmm, that imagery hasn&#8217;t been used in a few years. Ok, um, the Internet is like a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Series_of_tubes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">series of tubes<\/a>. Wait no that isn&#8217;t right, it&#8217;s like a pipe. Yeah, an internet connection is like a pipe, a broadband connection is like a big fat pipe, like the water main into one&#8217;s home feeding water into smaller pipes that deliver it unto the proper appliance within one&#8217;s home.<\/p>\n<p>But in the case of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zoomshare.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">zoomshare<\/a> one of connecting pipe&#8217;s had a pin-size leak. When the &#8220;water pressure&#8221;, network traffic, was low some droplets of water, network packets, escaped via the leak. Annoying, but manageable. However, when the pressure was turned up the leak started to turn into a flood, more than half of the network packets never made it to their destination.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, analogies eventually breakdown since the logical inferences between the two items is never 100% exact. For example our water main to broadband connection analogy; unlike a water main a network connection is bi-directional. More importantly, dropped network packets, in small or large quantities don&#8217;t leave virtual puddles like water can. If you have a pipe dripping water you might not notice or care. But if you have a pipe leaking a large quantity of water, you will notice; in lack of water pressure as well as a large amount of water and water damage that will need taking care of.<\/p>\n<p>So, if we cannot hope to look for a puddle of network packets, then the question becomes can we measure our &#8220;water pressure&#8221; at different points along the way to our servers to determine where the drop in pressure, the leak might be?<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t Miss the Exciting Conclusion in: &#8220;All Really is Well&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/w.sharethis.com\/widget\/?%20tabs=web%2Cemail&amp;charset=utf-%208&amp;services=facebook%2Cdigg%2Cdelicious%2Cstumbleupon%20%2Ctechnorati%2Creddit%2Cpropeller%2Cwindows_live%2Cyahoo_%20myweb%2Cgoogle_bmarks%2Cblinklist%2Cnewsvine&amp;style=r%20otate&amp;publisher=23441421-9d3a-4d4c-8746-%20a097a0f4b702\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-0161564058640246\";\n\/* 468x60, created 3\/17\/09 *\/\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8731961173\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 468;\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\n\/\/ --><\/script><br \/>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the continuation of a story begun in &#8220;The Move&#8221; and &#8220;On Two Hours Sleep&#8221; in which our heroes battle nefarious network gremlins in order to save zoomshare from imploding under its own weight. The analogy has become a clich\u00e9 in a certain genres of television. It is usually found in the second or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[110,111,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}