Re: usage stats

marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 93 21:45:41 -0500
From: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Message-id: <9304210245.AA15988@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu>
To: Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl
Cc: Nathan Torkington <Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz>, www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Re: usage stats 
In-reply-to: <9304190803.AA09172=guido@voorn.cwi.nl>
References: <199304190415.AA14381@kauri.vuw.ac.nz>
	<9304190803.AA09172=guido@voorn.cwi.nl>
X-Md4-Signature: 5e5ce0edc9d6de6a94899ce45a434e91

Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl writes:
> >Over the three (or is it four) month period from December '92 to March
> >'93, gopher usage increased by 65%.  If you think that sounds
> >impressive, wait -- WWW usage increased by 2800%.  Of course, the
> >relative operational ages of the systems should be taken into account,
> >but it still sounds pretty darn impressive :)
> 
> Note one thing however -- I looked at my usage stats the other day and
> found they had increased trmendously.  However, close inspection of
> the log file showed that around April 3-6 a mail robot at
> void.ncsa.uiuc.edu had been active, multiplying my load from an
> average twenty to over a thousand requests per day...

OK, hypothetical question time.

Suppose we had developed a new net scanning tool that consisted of a
daemon that can run independently of user guidance and a Motif-based
GUI that can attach/detach to/from the daemon at any time and allow a
user to interactively or asynchronously guide the daemon's progress
through the information space on the global network.

Suppose further, and more specifically, that this front-end was really
really impressive (also suppose I didn't write it, so I could
theoretically say that without sounding pompous) and included
interactive drag/drop/point/click graphical maps of the information
space the daemon traversed, as well as direct control over a variety
of constraint parameters to control the daemon's progress both in real
time and asynchronously (e.g., you can tell it where to look and what
to look for interactively, and then detach and let it run
asynchronously overnight, and then reattach in the morning to discover
what it's found).

If we had theoretically developed such a hypothetical tool, should we
release it to the net?  Or are experiences similar to Guido's above,
except on a much larger scale, liable to have severely deleterious
effects on the network and the servers currently on it, and should we
therefore not release it?

You be the judge.........

Cheers,
Marc

--
Marc Andreessen
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu