Re: Favorite Tom Lane quotes

Scott Marlowe wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 10:42 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 00:37 -0500, Greg Smith wrote:
> >> Tom on things that might ruin his tape backups:
> >>
> >> "Then of course there are the *other* risks, such as the place burning to
> >> the ground, or getting drowned by a break in the city reservoir that's a
> >> couple hundred yards up the hill...Or maybe being burgled by Oracle
> >> employees who are specifically after my backup tapes."
> >
> > What is a tape?
>
> Apparently something to do with backups.  But I don't know what those
> are either... :-P
>

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes
hurtling down the highway." —Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996). Computer
Networks. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 83. ISBN 0-13-349945-6.

A modern chrysler town and country(1) has a cargo capacity of 140.1
cubic feet(2) letting it carry 17163 LTO4 (3) tapes at 800GB each.
Thats 13730TB. Say it has to get from San Francisco to LA (about 6 hrs
according to google maps directions(4)), that gives 2288TB/hour,  or 5.1
terabit/second.

klint.

1. its more of a minivan than a station wagon these days but close
enough.  halve the number of tapes if you're thinking of the classic
"woodie" http://www.allpar.com/old/townandcountry.html
2.
http://www.chrysler.com/hostc/vsmc/vehicleSpecModels.do?modelYearCode=CUC200908
3. dimensions from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open
4.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=san+francisco&daddr=los+angeles&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=58.598104,116.542969&ie=UTF8&ll=35.939855,-120.330885&spn=7.601811,14.567871&z=7

--
Klint Gore
Database Manager
Sheep CRC
A.G.B.U.
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2350

Ph: 02 6773 3789
Fax: 02 6773 3266
EMail: kgore4@une.edu.au