Unit of 1 - Don't Let Vendors Mislead You About Networking Speeds.

CJRhoads writes "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
By CJ Rhoads

It Started with a Webcast on Infrastructure

Although I'm not as old as Mark Twain was when he colored "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics" with the same brush, this phrase sprung to my mind as I sat through a webcast recently. If you haven't had the pleasure yet, a webcast is like a telecast (that is - like a television show) but it is sent out over the Internet instead of the television cable or satellite. While a television show may cost thousands or millions to put on tv, a web cast can be done much more inexpensively - making it a viable alternative for smaller audiences. It is a common method for technology companies to inform potential buyers about different technologies.

I signed up for this webcast because it promised to reveal which infrastructure standards are in use in business today. There were two reasons I attended.

For one - Infrastructure is one of those odd terms which can be used in a variety of ways; each meaning entirely different things. I was interested in which "infrastructure" this particular presentation was going to cover. I also wanted to know how much change had occurred since I last looked at this sort of information.

It was sponsored by a publication, and presented by a well-reputed research company. Nonetheless, I suspected that some vendor was in the background paying for the presentation - I just didn't know who. Once the webcast started, I realized that the word "infrastructure" referred to the local area network (LAN) wiring cables and devices - narrowing down the probable economic sponsors to a list of LAN device vendors.

Such sponsorship would have been nothing new, so why did this particular webcast make me think of the "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics" phrase?

The presenter was providing statistics on what businesses today were using in their networks. His statistics made it look as if the majority of networks were using "Gigabit Ethernet". That is ludicrous. While I haven't done my own study, I can tell you right now that most networks are Ethernet running at 10 or 100 megabits per second. The presenter obviously took what companies were buying from one vendor (perhaps the paying vendor who specialized in Gigabit Ethernet devices?) and extrapolated by assuming that the average network reflected only what was being sold today. That would be like looking at sales of Mercedes Benz autos, seeing that SUVs were selling the best, and announcing that 7 out of 10 cars on the road today were SUVs. (I know it may SEEM like they are everywhere, but count the cars in the parking lot. SUVs are not the majority of cars.) When you consider the billions of networking devices out there in the world, Gigabit Ethernet is barely a blip yet - about on the ratio of Rolls Royce to common cars.

Misleading Information Leads to Bad Decisions

Why did the presenter's misinformation make me angry? Well - I can imagine someone else attending this webcast and thinking "Oh no! - our network is only 10 and our competitors' network is probably 1000 - we'd better get moving on those RFPs!" That would be a big mistake. Bear with me a moment while I give some background to explain why.

The Size of Ethernet

Years ago, there were many choices for your LAN cables and devices. Eventually, however, all but one option went away: Ethernet with category 5 unshielded twisted pair cable (it looks like telephone wire) running at 100 megabits per second connected to an Ethernet switch. This choice, Ethernet, is now ubiquitous.

Like many other things, Ethernet has been improving over time. The Ethernet of the eighties ran at 10 megabits per second. Since the latter nineties, most Ethernet networks run at 100 megabits per second. Gigabit Ethernet can run at 1000 megabits per second (or 1 gigabit per second) and just recently came out.

Technology folk salivate over gigabit networks and gigabit switches just like car enthusiasts hanker for more horsepower even though they never go faster than 60. There are extremely few situations where companies need more than even 10 megabits. Networking folk put in 100 simply because it's just as cheap as 10, and there's no reason not to. But there's no reason to do so, either. Megabits per second may be referred to as a measurement of speed, but it's really a measurement of potential volume - i.e. -size. Information doesn't necessarily move faster just because the pipe has gotten bigger.

Relative Sizes of LAN and WAN

For most users, the bottleneck is the wide area network (WAN) or Internet pipe - not the local area network pipe. Comparing the pipe size of LAN and WAN is like comparing the size of the Atlantic Ocean to a glass of water. They are not even on the same chart. If Doris is sitting in the Atlantic Ocean and John is sitting in the Pacific Ocean, and if they only have a drinking straw between them, does the size of the ocean make a difference? The only advantage to the bigger ocean is that John can brag to his water friends how he has more water than they do. But to the fish in the ocean it looks the same.

In summary, it makes no sense to upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet unless you have a real need for it. The secondary lesson is that we might want to look very carefully at statistics we are being shown.

Do you have any occasions where you made a decision based on a statistic that later turned out to be misleading? Let me know at CJRhoads@ETMAssociates.com
http://ETMAssociates.com"

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