An Open Letter To The Linux Enthusiasts. 17403

On Sat, 11 Jun 2005 05:59:09 GMT, Sinister Midget

The part you keep ignoring, and I can only believe this is intentional at this point, is that it has *NOTHING* to do with the servers. In fact, the DDoS against MS wasn't even targeted at their servers. It was targeted at their routers.

So how, pray tell, can you justify your claim that MS's servers weren't up to the task when they were never even attacked?

No, it's simply cheaper to use a service that already exists and has it's infrastructure in place.

I don't follow what you're trying to say here. DNS is not a very resource intensive application. You can typically service a pooload of requests on even a minimal server, be it Linux or Windows. The issue is, if a few servers (or their routers) are knocked out by a DDoS, will DNS still work on everything else?

With Akamai's infrastructure, the answer is yes. With MS's infrastructure, the answer is no.

Being able to afford it is not the point. The point is, why pay orders of magnitude more money to do a service yourself than to utilize an existing service that is cheaper because they can amortize the costs over many more customers?

I believe i've addressed your points, at least those that are not of the "Do yuo still beat your wife?" variety.

*NO OTHER COMPANY EXISTS* that does what Akamai does. They're the only one. Thus, they could not have "found a company within minutes that did *not* use linux to do the same thing".

You like proving my point, don't you?

You do realize that MS *IS* spread out across the entire planet, right?

What you keep ignoring is that while MS (or anyone) CAN duplicate Akamai's service, it's simply not cost justifiable when Akamai exists. Akamai is orders of magnitude cheaper than setting up your own service, even if you did so with Linux.

What you're suggesting is, "Hey, i've got a few phone lines here, i'll set up my own phone company. That shouldn't be too hard, should it?"

I'll take that for a "mea culpa".

And you're a complete idiot for thinking that any company would do that when a much cheaper alternative exists.