the first three steps

[waider]

1. Rate in order of speed: read from cpu register, disk seek, context switch, read from main memory.
2. What are the three packets which establish a TCP session?
3. How many machines can you put in a /17 network (method of calculating will suffice)

More news as this story develops.

Comments

[bitpuddle.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a really annoying job interview.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

1) 1, 4, 3, 2 (not sure about those last two)
2) syn, syn-ack, ack (do i have the last two reversed? argh)
3) 256*128, um, 2^15

[waider.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, I think I had figured a context switch to be faster than both main memory access and disk seek. The former is, on reflection, plainly wrong, since memory access takes in the order of nanoseconds. Linux can pull a context switch in 5 microseconds or less (not quite the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, but hey), and if I recall correctly disk seeking is still in the millisecond realm.

Also, I am giggled to note that you had a computation for (3). I got stuck trying to compute the answer, but apparently "showing my work" was sufficient. (It's 256 * 128 - 2, btw. Network and Broadcast addresses can't be used)

[candice.livejournal.com]

I'm more likely to post something snarky along the lines of "well, you can put as many -computers- as you want, but you get limited along the lines of how many addresses you can give them, and how many interfaces you use.

[waider.livejournal.com]

...which doesn't get you anything except stroppy with the person asking the questions, which wasn't really the point of the exercise. But to each their own.