[Mailman-Developers] The Philosophy of Web Use.

[emf]

Brad Knowles wrote:

> I just read the intro to a Slashdot article at
> <http://slashdot.org/articles/06/07/06/1654242.shtml>, which quoted the
> following section:
> 
> | Dollar for dollar, network-based computers are faster.

This is incorrect, based on my experience of working in a few data centers.

While it is possible to buy expensive hardware today that has more 
performance than the average consumer machine, hardware is getting 
better faster than purchasing decisions.

Because the consumer market is both larger and growing faster than the 
server market, and the machines less reliable, the average server is 
older than the average client machine, and thus have less resources than 
the average client.

Even if you disagree with this point, there's one server for many 
clients; the amount of resources available to devote to the task of an 
individual user's web experience is almost always greater on their end 
of the pipe.

What it boils down to is that people perceive change at around 150msec; 
very few net users get anywhere near this latency, and so for most, the 
round-trip delay represents a substantial impediment to the 
responsiveness of the interface.

~ethan fremen