Newsgroups: workspace.we_want_bandwidth


previous    top    workgroup    thread    next


Subject: DXPP - Ping Project
From: marleen <marleen@waag.org>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 17:44:51 METDST

* * * * *


DXPP
Documenta X Ping Project

Bandwidth measurement in the Hybrid Workspace

Bandwidth = the power to speak = the ability to assert yourself
= the power of access = the capital of the information economy

We measure who owns the capital of the future.

At the Hybrid Workspace at Documenta X The Society for Old and New Media is measuring the bandwidth of the world. By continuously sending so-called 'ping'-packets around the internet we try to map where is a lot of bandwidth and were isn't. As a lot of bandwidth also means a lot of information, it means power. Bandwidth is the capital of the future.

What are Ping-packets?

Unix user manuals give a technical description of PING:

ping utilizes the ICMP protocol's ECHO_REQUEST datagram to elicit an ICMP ECHO_RESPONSE from the specified host or network gateway. If host responds, ping will print host is alive on the standard output and exit. Otherwise after timeout seconds, it will write no answer from host. The default value of timeout is 20 seconds.
When the -s flag is specified, ping sends one datagram per second (adjustable with -I), and prints one line of output for every ECHO_RESPONSE that it receives. No output is produced if there is no response. In this second form, ping computes round trip times and packet loss statistics; it displays a summary of this information upon termination or timeout. The default datagram packet size is 64 bytes, or you can specify a size with the packetsize command-line argument. If an optional count is given, ping sends only that number of requests.

It basically means our computers are sending out little 'packets' (blocks of random information to a computer at the other end of the world, and instruct them to come back to us. By measuring the time it takes for the packets to return, we measure the bandwidth we have to that specific computer. By using extensive lists of all the computers in the world we try to map the bandwidth of the world.