What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I’ve just come back from vacation. I’ve been in New Zealand for the past two weeks. (Did you miss me? I missed you.) Anyway, after the stress of the U.S. elections, (I am a political animal*) I needed it, badly.

I headed to New Zealand, mostly because I’m obsessed with the country’s multi-party electoral system of proportional representation.  This is especially important in New Zealand, where voting for the “lesser of two evils” invariably means casting a ballot for Saruman.  Also, I really, really wanted to try Zorbing.

Zorbing is basically crawling into a giant, air-cushioned hamster ball, and being rolled down a hill.  It’s just like being in an XKCD comic!

Here’s some pictures and video:

Inside the Zorb from Brian Boyko on Vimeo.

But, of course, as the adrenaline wore off and I reflected on the experience, I realized that, despite all the fun, I would have to start back at work today, so I did what I always do in these situations: Take something totally unrelated to network performance, and relate it to network performance.

For example, the Zorb in Rotorua has two tracks, both of which start from the same point, and both of which come to a stop at the bottom of the same hill; but I only had the time to go down one before the last bus of the day left.  Wanting to extend my fun as long as possible, instead of choosing the straight, downhill, fast track, I chose the bumpy, zig-zag one.  This track was more circuitous and involved multiple hops.  More hops = longer time.  In a network context, this delay is called “serialization delay.” In a zorb, this delay is called “WHEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Okay, it’s a lame comparison, but give me a second to get up to speed – I just got home after traveling for 34 straight hours, including 16 hours of layover and 18 hours of flight.

The other thing about New Zealand is that everyone there complained about the speed of Internet access – there’s really nothing to do about it, as New Zealand is extremely remote to the rest of the world.  Even Australia is 1,000 miles away, and the alternatives to undersea cabling is satellite communication.  There are bound to be latency issues due to propagation (speed-of-light) delay.

Anyway, I’m tanned, rested, and ready.  We’ll finish up Joel’s series and post some other stuff in the following days.  Thanks for sticking with us.

* some sort of flightless bird, most probably.