RESEARCH 》 Benchmark Raspberry Pi and other embedded SoC with TrueBench

Timelapse Screen Capture of TOFFEE-DataCenter Network Acceleration - with new RRDtool graph support

TOFFEE-Butterscotch a TOFFEE for Home/SOHO Internet/WAN bandwidth

Ever since after I launched my new The TOFFEE Project website on 1-May'2016, I can see there is a steep increase in traffic. Soon after the launch when I monitored its Alexa rankings it was reporting about 12 Million or so. But once it is getting more and more traffic the Alexa rankings shot up and now currently it shows around 2 Million (as on 22-July-2016). Alexa is an excellent tool to monitor your overall website global ranking and indirectly its performance. Unlike Google Analytics which is bound one or other way into Google's SEO. Alexa gives you a second opinion about your website's growth.

In the previous update (17-Jun-2016) I discussed about the upcoming new Random Packet drop feature along with other completed features. Now I completed the entire TOFFEE-Mocha Random packet drop feature. I completed all the kernel components and the UI support of the same. And to make GUI settings more organized I split the earlier Basic-Settings page into two separate pages namely: Packet Drop and Packet Delay. So this way it is simple to understand settings according to their functionality.

There are various techniques with which one can optimize their WAN Network Data. Any long distance communication can be considered as WAN Network. A decade ago any network connecting two countries, considered as a WAN network, and a network within a city as MAN and soon. But these days in general any long distance communication is considered as WAN Network. Such as your Mobile communication networks, Satellite networks, Space Networks (Deep space networks), Trans-Atlantic cable networks, etc.

Assume you have two sites (such as Site-A and Site-B) connected via slow/critical WAN link as shown below. You can optimize this link by saving the bandwidth as well possibly improve the speed. However, the WAN speed can be optimized only if the WAN link speeds are below that of the processing latency of your TOFFEE installed hardware. Assume your WAN link is 12Mbps, and assume the maximum WAN optimization speed/capacity of Raspberry Pi is 20Mbps, then your link will get speed optimization too. And in another case, assume your WAN link is 50Mbps, then using the Raspberry Pi as WAN Optimization device will actually increase the latency (i.e slows the WAN link). But in all the cases the bandwidth savings should be the same irrespective of the WAN link speed. In other words, if you want to cut down the WAN link costs via this WAN Optimization set up, you can always get it since it reduces the overall bandwidth in almost all the cases (including encrypted and pre-compressed data).

Raspberry Pi is often used as a single board computer for applications such as IoT, hobby projects, DIY, education aid, research and prototyping device. But apart from these applications Raspberry Pi can be used for real-world applications such as in making a full-fledged networking devices. Raspberry Pi is a single board ARM based hardware which is why it is also classified as ARM based SoC. Since it is ARM based it is highly efficient, tiny form-factor and lower in power consumption with moderate computational power. This will allow it to work several hours on emergency battery backup power supply such as low-cost domestic UPS and or some renewable energy source, which is a prerequisite for a typical networking device.

It is quite interesting that there are few web hosting firms are offering direct CDN based hosting services. Since it is a direct CDN based hosting, it is cheap, extremely easy or transparent CDN service. It is transparent, since each time you publish your content in the hosting web-server (origin server), it is immediately is in sync automatically in the user-serving CDN caching machines. Since the hosting vendor and the CDN vendor are all the same, it is also easy to use their services. There is no incompatibility issues, interoperability issues, and better integrated analytics, are all the benefits of CDN Hosting services.

Here is my power-consumption measurements of various devices deployed within my home lab. I measured via my kill-a-watt sort of power-meter which is fairly reliable and accurate. I checked its accuracy with various standard load such as Philips LED laps and other constant power-consuming devices to make sure that the power-meter is precise.

The TOFFEE Project :: TOFFEE-DataCenter :: Linux Open-Source WAN Optimization