Google Bakes A Gigantic Cake

“To commemorate the first anniversary of our New York office in its current space, we decided to think big — a giant scale-model cake of the entire block-long building,” announced Kevin McConvey, a cafe director, on the Official Google Blog.  “Our facilities manager, Laura Gimpel, and I came up with a plan to construct this tasty treat and serve it at last Thursday’s anniversary celebration.”

That plan, which McConvey went on to lay out, involved four days, seven people, 630 eggs, 105 pounds of sugar, and 20 pounds of butter.  “The finished product was five feet long, three feet high and two feet wide,” he reported.  “Now that’s a lot of cake!”

And, as you can (usually) trust Google to do, the company let nothing go to waste; the last of the ginormous treat disappeared on Friday evening.

Now, I’m not sure that the cake did anyone’s waistline or blood pressure much good, and health enthusiasts may wholeheartedly object to the project.  But the pleasure of working for Google probably makes up for some of that stuff.  And in any event, I’m with McConvey, who concluded, “I can’t wait to see what we do when our office turns two.”

 Don’t worry, he doesn’t list all of them there. He does, though, if you like learning the origin of phrases, go into where the phrase "There’s no such thing as a free lunch" comes from.

The most popular of the free queries were searches for free games, music, and ringtones. Well, that’s the family friendly version.

The Skinemax version is that most of time, freeloaders are looking for sex, sex stories, sex videos, and sex pics. These may also want to do a search on "free virus protection," while they’re at it.

If memory serves, though, free ringtones, games and wallpaper are dangerous queries, too.

As you might expect, free shipping is most popular around the holidays, and free games, chat and movies are more in demand during the lazy summers.

Here are a couple of other idiomatic origins, just for good measure:

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
 

Some good points -

• I don’t really open more than about 10 tabs at max and thus the individual close button is a boon.
• I love the realtime spell check.
• The seamless integration of Feeds is another kick-ass feature. You can customize it to your choice of application to handle the Feeds. For instance, I’ve defaulted it to Newsgator Online which syncs with NetNewsWire for the Mac and FeedDemon for Windows.

Mozilla

• Visit the official Firefox/Thunderbird site
• Firefox Add-ons
• Mozilla’s own favorite and Recommended Add-ons for Firefox 2.0

Firefox 2.0 Reviews

• Read/Write Web

References

• Read Moving the Internet Forward from Mitchell Baker
• Interview With Chris Beard, Mozilla VP Products
• Firefox 2.0 Release Notes
• Oinam’s list of Firefox Add-ons (This will be updated regularly to delete deprecated ones and put new recommended ones. This is exclusively for our team and may not be suitable to you in some circumstances.)
• The New Mozilla Recommended Add-ons List: The Winners and the Losers
• [Photo] Microsoft sends a congratulation cake to Mozilla
• Read Chris Messina’s The beginning of Web 2.0, a cold war of the web browser lurking around the corner.
• [Video] Chill out a bit at Firefox Flicks

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Tia is CEO of Client Centers, LLC, an internet and graphic service business based in Florida since 2000. She is also the editor and founder of www.NerdByte.com

1. Choose the right affiliate programs:

An affiliate agreement is a business relationship between the merchant of a product or service and a website owner who promotes the merchant’s offerings.

The website (affiliate i.e. You) earns a commission from the merchant (i.e. program owner) for each referral that results: -in a newsletter subscription for “Pay per lead” programs, -in a visitor referral for “Pay per click” programs, -in a sale for “Pay per sale” programs.

The affiliate plays no role in the sales contract; the product is sold by the merchant to the customer.

As the most of affiliates directories do, I personally do prefer “Pay per sale” affiliate programs. This is simply because these programs have the most profit margin. Think about results/effort ratio (we will see this later).

What about two-tier programs?

They are “2 levels” affiliate programs that make it possible to you to recruit “sub-affiliates”. Thus, the merchant, the first level affiliate (i.e. you) and the second level affiliate (your downline) will all make profit.

Well, I do not support this kind of programs as they are considered somehow as Multi Level Marketing. And MLM has a mitigated reputation in the Internet.

What makes a specific affiliate program good?

When you are hunting for the rare pearl (i.e. the program that suits you), make sure all the following criteria apply on it:

-The category: This is very important. Choose affiliate programs relating to the main topic of your web site.

-The general aspect of the program: Check for the program information page on the merchant’s web site. It’s a good indicator of the program’s quality.

-The sign up process: It must be easy and secure.

-The Control Panel: As an affiliate I really appreciate the Control Panel provided to me after registration. There, I can get access and control for all cooperations, products sales, earned commissions… Real time statistics are highly recommended too.

-The tracking software: Ask the merchant for details before you join. A powerful tracking system is somehow a regular payment guarantee.

-The commission rate or amount: I consider that 15% is not acceptable and 25% is a little bit reasonable.

-The payment method and schedule: It is amazing that some merchants omit paying their affiliates. Also it is good to be able to choose the payment method: check, wire transfer.

-The minimum earnings before receiving payment: The affiliate must have earned a minimum amount in commission before payment can be made. If the minimum amount is not reached within the month, the total is carried over to the next month and added to the next payment. Always ask for this precious information. It is good to know about.

All these criteria determine the Quality of an affiliate program.

There are plenty of programs offers on the Internet, but only few are based on quality.

I believe that providing Quality service or content is the solid guarantee for steady success. It is a simple philosophy and I have always gotten by on it.

All the best!

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Today there is a growing trend toward incorporating functions that would typically be handled by several separate devices into a single device. This trend is forever changing a once-familiar landscape, and many old-school vendors are waking to find new competition has sprouted up overnight. For system administrators, the added competition means they’re faced with learning about many new and unfamiliar products.

So what’s a system administrator to do? Stick with the tried-and-true method of every device having a single (or limited) set of functions? Or blow the entire budget on a new wundermachine, capable of performing all the network functions you need? The answer is probably somewhere in between, but as with any network planning and implementation, it depends on the type of site you have or on your organization’s specific requirements.

The Grass Is Always Greener

Vendors, reeling from the drastic downturn in IT spending, are looking for ways to expand their current revenues while also taking market share from their competitors. In the realm of networking products, vendors have figured out that by adding a few features to an already existing product, they can easily attract more customers. What’s more, the cost of developing new features can be relatively minor compared with developing a from-the-drawing-board product. This is because the former usually involves simply adding new code and loading it into an existing platform (or developing a blade for an already-existing chassis platform). The relatively low cost, when combined with the creation of a new, feature-rich product, is a win-win endeavor for vendors, as even minor penetration into a new market can mean more profit for their companies.

One approach to this feature-adding tactic is to simply roll out the new features with each revision of code. They can be distributed on new machines, and existing customers can pay a nominal fee for the upgrade. Another, more popular approach is to charge for the new features, without adding new hardware. Simply pay a licensing fee, and a new feature is enabledon an existing device. For chassis-based devices, these new features could be added with a code upgrade, using one of the two previous models mentioned. If new hardware is required, the new features could be purchased as an additional card, typically a minor cost compared with the cost of the chassis itself.

For potential customers, rolling out new features with little or no cost also makes a product more attractive. These customers might not need all the bells and whistles now, but this pay-per-feature approach allows a pick-and-choose menu of sorts, allowing you to pay only for what you need.

Making Your Move

One of the earliest vendor developments was to provide both Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing in a single device. The Layer 3 features ranged from basic support for packet forwarding and static routes to full support for routing protocols such as BGP4, OSPF, and ISIS.

More recent moves include adding Server Load Balancing (SLB) and other SLB-related features, such as Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) or WAN-based SLB, and Firewall Load Balancing (FWLB). SSL acceleration, caching, proxy servers, and other features are also being integrated into a single device or into a pair of redundant devices.

Pick A Card, Any Card

Here are examples of products that have expanded into new territory:

• Extreme Networks began by developing a Layer 2/3 switching/routing switch platform, and now it has also licensed code from F5 to allow SLB functionality in many of its switches.

• Cisco Systems bought up other companies that provided SLB functionality. In 1995, Cisco purchased Network Translations for its LocalDirector series; in
  2000, it bought ArrowPoint Communications for its CSS series and Netiverse for its CSM blades, a load balancer in the form of a switch blade for the Catalyst 6000 series of switches. (Cisco’s Catalyst 6000 series were built to allow tight integration of Layer 3 functionality, an improvement over the RSM Layer 3 modules in the Catalyst 5500 series.)

• Foundry Networks developed its Layer 2/3 NetIron switches and Layer 2/4-7 ServerIron series, which offer routing and load balancing in addition to the Layer 2 base. Foundry also has a BigIron chassis platform, which offers Layer 2-7 functionality with expandable Layer 2 aggregation.

• Nortel Networks purchased Alteon Websystems for its Layer 2-7 Web switching platform. Nortel kept the Alteon brand and continues to offer more features in its switch and chassis platforms, such as Quality Of Service (QoS) and more flexible SLB.

These are but a few examples of companies expanding into new markets.

Decisions, Decisions

So what’s in it for system administrators? What’s the best course of action for your network? This article doesn’t answer these questions; instead, it describes the factors to take into account when making network equipment assessments and decisions.

There are several benefits to having all of your networking functions performed by just one box (or with just a few boxes). You deal with a limited amount of vendors, which makes administration easier, as there is usually only one set of commands with which to become familiar. Warrantee and support issues are also simplified. Less equipment typically means less cost, so there is a financial advantage to choosing a more layered approach — important in the world of the dwindling IT budget. For smaller shops, this type of consolidation can be the difference between implementation and a daydream.

Layer 2 redundancy is another benfit of feature consolidation. With multiple devices, configuring redundancy is often difficult, if not impossible (some devices, such as high-end Layer 3 routers, don’t offer redundant Layer 2 interfaces). And multiple boxes can create a tangle of cross-connects and other redundancy nightmares. If you have just a pair of devices performing all of your networking functions, it’s easy to implement Layer 2 redundancy.

Figure 1 illustrates the Layer 2 redundancy nightmare scenario — all too common a challenge for site administrators. Each device has a separate task (Layer 2, Layer 3, firewall, and so on), and each device requires you to provide a redundant unit for fail-over. For complete Layer 2 redundancy, every device (including the servers themselves) needs to have a double connection, one into each redundant Layer 2 switch. You’ll note the Layer 3 routers do not have such a double connection; this is because most Layer 3 routers do not have redundant Layer 2 connections per interface.

Figure 1: Layer 2 redundancy nightmare.

This type of wiring scenario can be complicated and difficult to administer and troubleshoot. The only things to do at this point are to tolerate the situation or sacrifice some of the Layer 2 redundancy for an easier and more elegant configuration.

In Figure 2, we see how using just a single pair of multipurpose devices simplifies redundancy for the installation. Only double Layer 2 connections to the individual servers themselves are required for full redundancy.

Figure 2: Single device pair redundancy scenario.

Redundancy issues, especially those in the Layer 2 realm, are complicated and would require a separate
article (or even a book) to do them justice. We’re just touching on some of the issues related to choosing what type of device — either single-purpose or multipurpose — is best for a site.

Jack-Of-All-Trades

One of the greatest disadvantages to feature consolidation is that it’s difficult to provide for all of your needs in just one box. As the saying goes, “a jack-of-all-trades is master of none,” and this is certainly true of networking devices. You may find a Layer 2/3 switching platform that also provides SLB, but which lacks a few key features required for your specific site, such as cookie-based persistence or the ability to perform certain kinds of Network Address Translation (NAT) functions. Another Layer 2/3 switch might provide BGP service, but doesn’t have enough RAM to pull down a full BGP session. The lack of a specific feature you need isn’t always obvious, either, and can be a big gotcha you only discover after spendingthousands on equipment.

The cost-savings argument can be flipped in favor of non-consolidation as well, such as the case of a large-scale site and Layer 2 port aggregation. An all-in-one device may perform all of the functions you need, but the cost per port may be significantly higher than that of a regular Layer 2 switch. It often makes much more sense to use a high-density Layer 2 switching platform (and thus relative low cost-per-port) to aggregate Layer 2 connectivity, while separate functions such as firewalls, load balancers, and so on are connected into the Layer 2 infrastructure. An example would be using a pair of Cisco Catalyst 6500s to aggregate traffic from a pair of F5′s BIG-IPs to a large number of servers.

Performance may also be a factor in deciding whether to consolidate features. If the implementation of one feature is pegging the resources of a device, then other, unrelated features might likely suffer as well. For instance, it’s theoretically possible to have a situation where the heavy use of the load balancing features of a device used in a small portion of a site may affect performance for the rest of the infrastructure. Of course, this depends on the architecture of such a device (some devices might have separate processing resources for various tasks), but it’s something to bear in mind.

Hands-On Experience

I’ve set up a number of large, medium, and small-scale sites, and there is a difference in how the various consolidations of layers affect implementation based on the size.

Smaller-scale installations, such as from one- to ten-server configurations, can definitely benefit from feature consolidation. There are many vendors that provide Layer 2 connectivity, server load balancing, access lists, and routing in a single device (or with a pair of redundant devices). Less equipment usually translates into less cost, and usually, the basic functions required by a smaller-size site are met by general functionality. This can be critical for budget-starved installations looking to save money.

Larger-scale installations have different needs. Because there may be a need for a large number of Fast/Gigabit Ethernet ports, I usually recommend going with a large Layer 2 infrastructure, with the other network devices, such as load balancers and routers, hung off of the Layer 2 infrastructure. Getting a full-featured box can really jack up the per-port price, while using a basic, inexpensive Layer 2 platform plus additional devices to provide other required functionality can be more cost-effective. Performance issues also can be scaled more effectively this way. It’s possible, depending on the product, that heavy use of one individual function might degrade the performance of the entire system.

One exception to this separation is the new breed of Layer 2/3 chassis switches. The cost per port for Layer 2/3 functionality is usually not all that much more
than for just Layer 2 functionality. These devices can perform all of the necessary Layer 3 functions, including BGP routing, with either a software or a minor hardware upgrade (such as an additional blade on a chassis). Functions such as load balancing and SSL acceleration are usually best served with separate devices, however.

Conclusion

In the end, you have to realize that vendors are in business for revenue and market share, and that your ambition is contrary to theirs — having a successful site, of course. Keep your needs in mind and realize that while a vendor may be pushing a miracle device, it may not suit your needs. That said, there are a number of solutions available that could provide for all of your needs in one set of devices, and several different vendors may have developed those solutions. Be sure to check for the features specific to your site, as some products may not have one particular and critical feature. Who knows, in the next five years there may be just one device that encompasses all network requirements, is the size of a toaster, and, well, also makes toast.

Tony Bourke is a private consultant specializing in Unix administration, networking, and load balancing.

Originally published at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/09/09/bourke.html.

Load balancing distributes traffic efficiently among network servers so that no individual server is overburdened. This vendor-neutral guide to the concepts and terminology of load balancing offers practical guidance to planning and implementing the technology in most environments. It includes a configuration guide with diagrams and sample configurations for installing, configuring, and maintaining products from the four major server load balancing vendors.

Tony Bourke is a private consultant specializing in Unix administration, networking, and load balancing.

Originally published at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/09/09/bourke.html.