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Google Businesses The Internet Communications Data Storage

Kevin Rose Load Tests Gmail 366

Posted by timothy from the really-pushing-the-envelope dept.
SishGupta writes "Load Testing Gmail - fillmybox@gmail.com A few weeks ago, Kevin Rose of the The Screen Savers decided to load test Google's new email service, Gmail. He asked everyone to email him their favourite 5MB attachments to 'fillmybox@gmail.com.' The test Gmail account is now 102% maxed out. You can read about the test and the results at Kevin Rose.com (his weblog)."
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Kevin Rose Load Tests Gmail More

Kevin Rose Load Tests Gmail

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  • Slashdot Load Tests Kevin Rose's Web Server (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:36PM (#9807690)
    Bet he wasn't expecting that!

  • Wow... (Score:3, Funny)

    by oldosadmin ( 759103 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:37PM (#9807700) Homepage
    And I was thinking the fact I was at 13% was quite impressive.

  • Gmail annoys me (Score:3, Funny)

    by Blymie ( 231220 ) * on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:37PM (#9807701)
    I've had little success with GMail's "auto ignore" option. Check this mozilla screengrab out:

    http://etrade.malformed.org/Screenshot.png [malformed.org]

  • Fill your box with what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:38PM (#9807708)
    With a gmail address of "fillmybox", I wonder what kind of file attachments he received!

  • KR (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why does anyone listen to him...he's half security, half pirate, half hacker.

    That's more then 100%!!!

    ~Eric

  • And now... (Score:3, Funny)

    by deutschemonte ( 764566 ) <lane@montgomery.gmail@com> on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:38PM (#9807712) Homepage
    ...may the Gmail privacy flaming begin!

  • That's nothing. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ktakki ( 64573 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:40PM (#9807724) Homepage Journal
    Why, just last night I wrote a little program that load tests Google.

    Regards,
    Arthur MyDoom, Jr.

  • 1GB = 1024MB so... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Compholio ( 770966 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:40PM (#9807726)
    ... since Google advertises the service as 1GB of email storage 1023MB is technically under the limit and not 102% of the limit.

    • Re:1GB = 1024MB so... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Feanturi ( 99866 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:45PM (#9807754)
      The limit as stated on the quota page is 1000MB, not 1GB. That's why he's at 102%.
      • Marketers for a long time have defined mega- and giga- to mean 1000x instead of 1024x, and since most dictionaries only list the 1000x definition it's the one that's more often going to be considered to be "right" by non-geek people.

        • Re:1GB = 1024MB so... (Score:5, Funny)

          by maxwell demon ( 590494 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @04:24AM (#9809422) Journal
          Well, the most interesting data point still is the "1.44 MB" floppy disk: It has 1.44*1000 "KB", that is, 1.44*1000*1024 Bytes (2 sides * 80 tracks/side * 18 sectors/track * 512 Bytes/sector; the usable space is of course slightly less due to file system overhead). Therefore even with the new binary prefixes (KiB = Kibibytes = 2^10 Bytes, etc.) you have problems: It's neither true 1.44 MB (meaning 1.44*10^6 Bytes), nor 1.44 MiB (meaning 1.44*2^20 Bytes). Maybe the right term would be "1.44 KKiB" (1.44 Kilokibibytes).
    • I was actually rather disapointed with google advertised 1gb limit displayed as 1000mb. Most advertisements for hard drives and other mediums use the 1000mb=1gb rounding for the public specs cause it makes the drive look bigger then it actually is. It's always struck as just a really cheap shadey thing to do. I'm glad to see that google allows you to use the full gig.
      • That's supposed to read:

        *when the* google advertised 1gb limit... It's always struck *me* as...

        I think the words.... I just forget to type them sometimes....

      • Re:1GB = 1024MB so... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by GigsVT ( 208848 )
        Rounding?

        Do you think it's shady when people "round" a kilometer "down" to 1000 meters?

        Or do SI prefixes mean something different to you?

    • Re:1GB = 1024MB so... (Score:3, Informative)

      by aaron_ds ( 711489 )
      Actually 1GiB is equal to 1024MiB while 1GB is equal to 1000MB
    • But no one, except for those of us who know better, call a GB a GB any longer. My Maxtor 200 GB drive is actually 189.77 GB. As much as I love my iPod, my 40 GB iPod is actually a 37.21 GB iPod.

      The hard drive manufacturers and the computer manufacturers have been doing this for years, and the average consumer has not noticed. Google is just going with the flow by saying 1 GB = 1000 MB.

  • And your point is ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IanBevan ( 213109 ) * on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:41PM (#9807733) Homepage
    Mod me down as flamebait if you really must, but what really was the point of this exercise ? I'm sure Google would find it an interesting test -assuming they've not already tried it themselves - but as the author says, he's never actually told anybody at google about it. It just doesn't strike me as particularly constructive...

    • Re:And your point is ? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:48PM (#9807785)
      Kevin Rose is a wannabe hacker (or cracker, whatever term you want to use) who tries to portray himself as a technology guru. This is simply another stunt to make him look cool in the eyes of script kiddies. Sad really...
      • Heh, he's on thebroken [thebroken.com], which is kinda lame, but then, I'm kinda lame, and they interviewed The Real Kevin.

        For more lame videos, also go to pure pwnage [purepwnage.com] if you're into zero hour.

        I need a life.

        ~Will

      • Re:And your point is ? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TheLink ( 130905 )
        "Kevin Rose is a wannabe hacker (or cracker, whatever term you want to use) who tries to portray himself as a technology guru. "

        Sure he's not that "1337" but you're probably just jealous - he has a girlfriend and you don't, he actually gets email from nonspammers, etc etc.

        It's a US TV show, what are you expecting d'oh? As is it's already too "1337" for the TV bosses that they're dumbing down TechTV into another channel.
      • And yet somehow it made the front page of Slashdot...
    • Uh. Well some of us learnt a few things new about gmail.

      1) It actually goes up to 1023MB, not 1000MB.
      2) Inbound email bandwidth per account is probably more than 20Mbps.
      3) You can't login for a few days if people fill it up rapidly with 5MB attachments.

      At least some nerds would be interested.

  • The best way to load test... (Score:5, Funny)

    by strredwolf ( 532 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:41PM (#9807734) Homepage Journal
    is to let everyone on Slashdot have an account, at once.

  • greatest moment ever on TSS (Score:5, Funny)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:44PM (#9807747)
    ...Kevin and co-host of the day finish talking about fillmybox@gmail.com and switch back over to Sarah for the news...

    Sarah: "Fill my box"
    Kevin: "I will later"

    /me ROFL

    Co-host of the day turns red.

    Any words Kevin?
  • porn1.mpg
    porn2.mog
    porn3.mpg
    ...
    ...

    Ahh.. gotta love when they put the offer out there for you.

  • Fill My Box? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:46PM (#9807769)
    Haven't heard that from the wife in ages!

    Thanks, folks, I'll be here all week! Tip your waitresses!

  • Next step, try the spam filters (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sssmashy ( 612587 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:46PM (#9807770)

    I received over 2,000 complaints from people who actually took the time to dig around and find my personal email address, I'm thinking we hit Gmail with around 50-75,000+, 5MB+ emails in a 10-15min window.

    Think of all the spam that one of these accounts could hold. I propose testing Gmail's spam filters next: disseminate your Gmail addy to porn sites, and everywhere else it will likely be harvested by a spam bot. Sit back, and let the spam roll in. It should be interesting to see just how fast this sucker fills up with ads for penis enlargers.

    • That's already been done. Some other "journalist" got people all over the net to sign up a gmail account to as many spam lists as possible, it took like 10 weeks to fill it with nothing but HTML and text spam.
    • I propose testing Gmail's spam filters next: disseminate your Gmail addy to porn sites
      Well, let's use page rank by linking his address to the words pornography [mailto] and free porn [mailto]!

      Problem solved. Mod me up folks, we'll turn google against itself!

    • Re:Next step, try the spam filters (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @11:25PM (#9808509) Journal
      Think of all the spam that one of these accounts could hold.
      I set up a Gmail account just over a month ago (on June 23rd). After I used it for a couple of test messages with friends, I set up a few of my most spammed email accounts to forward to Gmail. As of now, I have 67497 spam messages, using 360 MB (36%) of my 1000 MB.

      Gmail has gotten better at catching spam on its own, but it's not great yet. I use SpamAssassin and score anything over 6.1 as spam. Gmail sends stuff with scores as high as 8 straight to my inbox. Granted, it's easy to set up a system that works for me; it's hard to set up a system that works for everyone.

      One thing I've found really interesting is the ability to instantly search through 67,000+ spams! It's amazing how prolific the "random words to defeat Bayesian filters" spam tactic has gone. Just about every word I've tried appears somewhere within the contents of 67,000 spams...

      Search results for: in:anywhere anthropomorphic 1 - 20 of about 80

      Search results for: in:anywhere antagonistic 1 - 20 of about 150

      Search results for: in:anywhere necromancy 1 - 20 of 61

      Search results for: in:anywhere juxtaposition 1 - 20 of 58

      Search results for: in:anywhere loquacious 1 - 20 of 51

      It's crazy. I wasted a few minutes last week searching through my Gmail spam archive trying to find a word that didn't appear anywhere, and came up with very few successes. If nothing else, Gmail is probably the world's biggest and most accurate archive of spam.
      • It's crazy. I wasted a few minutes last week searching through my Gmail spam archive trying to find a word that didn't appear anywhere, and came up with very few successes. If nothing else, Gmail is probably the world's biggest and most accurate archive of spam.

        Wow, you just came up with a new form of Googlewhacking! I'm impressed!

  • Whoah (Score:2)

    by einer ( 459199 )
    I'm thinking we hit Gmail with around 50-75,000+, 5MB+ emails in a 10-15min window.

    Hopefully google didn't take that personally.

    I'd like to know if his theory about the compressed storage leading to a timeout condition is realistic.

    • Re:Whoah (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Monday July 26, 2004 @09:02PM (#9807879) Homepage Journal
      I can tell you that the theory is realistic, having run several compressed filesystems and generally having an interest in (transparent) compression, but I can't say if it's correct. It sounds a little wrong as it's fairly easy to say "no, don't try to compress files with extension X because it won't work". More likely Gmail choked on the decoding of attachments -- as you wouldn't store them in a wasteful 7-bit format.

      I hammered my own gmail account by forwarding up all my old messages using an Eudora filter. I was sending as many as 2,000 messages in a 15 minute period at one stage. While Gmail didn't lock me out, some messages took a particularly long time to appear. These messages were typically old automated receipts, such as eBay messages, that all look very similar but are in fact separate conversations. I'm guessing that there's a lot of overhead when a message arrives to determine if it's related to existing messages.

  • conspiracy theories (Score:3, Interesting)

    by F2F ( 11474 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:52PM (#9807803)
    we all want to know how google does it, don't we?

    here's what he thinks:

    Google knows that 80% of mail messages are text, and we all know that text is highly compressible. That said, they probably only have around 2-300MB of storage allocated for each 1GB account (obviously this will fluctuate up to 1GB depending on the user's mail content). My take on this, is that they have a huge series of RAID arrays at their server farm. Every time an email comes in, it is compressed and stored in that users account on the RAID.

    this should be closer to the truth: Venti: a new approach to archival storage [bell-labs.com]

    • Re:conspiracy theories (Score:5, Informative)

      by rnicey ( 315158 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @10:32PM (#9808265) Homepage
      What he thinks is most likely a bunch of rot.

      Decompress a gig on the fly when you login. Please... Do me a lemon.

      The real trick is in the routing for this type of application. When mail is delivered it is switched to a bank of servers which deal with your account (and many others obviously). The messages are indexed and stored.

      When you login there will be a range of load balanced servers routing your read requests back to that same bank of storage from the frontline web servers.

      Limit management is either done in the application logic, or in the database engine. Under load, with simultaneous receipts it's easy to see why you could go over 100% of storage. It's either that or you have to serialize the delivery per user which would suck and be harder.

      It's not a hard concept, but it is tricky to get right in implementation. This is what Google does best though.

  • huh huh uh huh huh (Score:5, Funny)

    by gwoodrow ( 753388 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @08:57PM (#9807840)
    [beavisandbutthead]

    uh huh huh
    uh huh huh
    "fill my box"
    uh huh huh

    [/beavisandbutthead]

  • What a pointless load of tosh! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MarkTina ( 611072 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @09:13PM (#9807931)
    What is the point in his test ? Did he think that Google hadn't done any testing at all ? Did he think that if a mailbox hit 100% something dreadful would happen ? Of course it's going to work just fine, 1Mb, 10Mb, 100Mb, 1000Mb or even 10,000Mb is just a tiny dribble in the ocean that is Googles' infrastructure. He's just looking for some kind of kudos ... "Hey dude I filled up my Gmail account!" "Wow! That's so ... so ... actually that's pretty lame .."
    • It didnt work just fine though. He was unable to access his account for several days. RTFA?
    • It wasn't really a test. It was more of a publicity stunt for the Screen Savers (and gmail). He was obviously really excited about being one of the first kids on the block to have a gmail account, plus, google probably paid TechTV huge $$$ to pull of the stunt, so that it would help to promote the service,... ;-)
  • I signed up my GMail account to every Apple mailing list, mainly because I am a developer and want a searchable archive of exactly the mailing lists i want.

  • That great sigh of disappointment you hear... (Score:3, Funny)

    by sdo1 ( 213835 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @09:32PM (#9808016) Journal
    That great sigh of disappointment you hear is the sound of thousands of porn site administrators realizing that one of the gmail account names they really wanted has been taken...

    -S
  • gspot@fillmybox.com sounds like a porn webmaster email. No wonder he wants all these attachments.
  • well, now we know that when you max out your gmail mailbox, you will no longer be able to send it mail.

    That's fantastic.

    i would have put that account to /much/ more constructive use.

    how much does this guy get paid?
  • Now Kevin will have load tests for his web server too!
  • All good bugs need to be verified to make sure they realy exist. SO anyone want to give me a gmail invite so I can verify the login bug for the good of mankind?

  • The "fill my box" recording: Download (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fog Dogg ( 800527 ) on Monday July 26, 2004 @10:35PM (#9808280)
    Here's the segment from g4techtv captured by me: http://www.members.shaw.ca/fog_dogg_69/fillmybox.w mv [members.shaw.ca]
  • I'll now be taking bets on which type of pr0n takes up the greatest percentage of this test.

  • stress testing conversations (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adpowers ( 153922 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @03:03AM (#9809233)
    I've done a little bit of my own stress testing. However, I've done it a little bit different. I wanted to see how Gmail handled huge conversations. I e-mailed my brother and we spammed each other back and forth in the same thread, seeing if we could influence the Ads. After a while we started adding more people to the conversation (our current test thread has nine people). We started out by hitting Reply All and saving the quotes from the previous e-mail. It became a huge list of >>> near the bottom and eventually Gmail clipped the messages. After a few hundred replies, opening the thread became slower and slower. When it reached 426 replies, it took me a week to finally get into it. With that I made one last reply and closed the thread. Hey, just out of curiosity, I opened the thread now and it loaded pretty easily. I wonder if they have optimized their behind the scenes engine to make it faster for large conversations. Maybe I'll continue the thread. Also, if you want to be part of the new test thread, just send an e-mail to adpowers@gmail.com [mailto].

    Anyway, here is my Gmail stress test [andrewhitchcock.org].

    Also, you'll notice I have a few mailing lists on the side. I only read the Freenet one, but I subscribed to the Linux Kernel list and some others because I know them to be high traffic. Gmail is pretty impressive and they seem to be optimizing it even more.

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