Packet Piggy Back Ride

November 7, 2005 on 12:52 pm | In Insider View by tavis |

Every wonder the route a packet takes around the DreamHost Datacenter ? Well I piggy backed on a few packets the other day and got some video. The movie starts out on our journey in through a fiber GigE uplink, through the core router and then through the myriad maze of servers. ( This is not a realistic path in any sense, I just ran around the datacenter following wires and stuff .)

36 Responses to “Packet Piggy Back Ride”

  1. Rich Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 1:22 pm

    Ok so where is my site?

  2. Jason Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 1:31 pm

    so….dizzy…. might… passs .. ou…

    THUD

  3. Jon Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 2:16 pm

    all your base are belong to us

  4. Pange Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 2:40 pm

    That was an exciting and dizzying journey!

  5. Chiisai Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 2:50 pm

    That’s a hell a lot of wires o___o

  6. Tom Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 2:55 pm

    Needs a sweet techno soundtrack. And Xserves. And more cowbell.

  7. Chris Meller Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 3:48 pm

    Where’s the narration?! I wanna know what we’re looking at!

    I’m a tad suspicious… There was one pink wire strung through all that white and grey wire? It’s a setup!

  8. Jacob Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 4:06 pm

    I wonder how many miles of wire that is.

  9. The Ill Crate » Blog Archive » A byte’s-eye view of the Ill Crate? Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 4:23 pm

    [...] Someone at our Web hosting company, DreamHost, made a video tracing the path that’s traveled (well, similar to the path that’s traveled) by all the little bits and bytes on their way into and through the DreamHost data center whenever you access a site like, oh, say, the Ill Crate! Okay, it’s not exactly David Fincher quality, but it’s still fun. So buckle up and enjoy the ride. [...]

  10. The Ill Crate Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 4:26 pm

    A byte’s-eye view of the Ill Crate?

    This is only marginally related to the Ill Crate, but I thought it was too good not to share.

    Someone at our Web hosting company, DreamHost, made a video tracing the path that’s traveled (well, similar to the path that’s traveled) by all t…

  11. Jack Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 5:42 pm

    Haha very awesome. My datacentre made me sign an NDA :(

  12. andrew Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 6:01 pm

    Fess up. In the middle there you kinda got lost and panicked a bit, didn’t you. ;-)

  13. Will Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 6:54 pm

    Who cares about the wires. Blinking LEDs are cool.

  14. C Montoya Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 8:40 pm

    That was like a rollercoaster… I’m gonna throw up.

  15. Discourse.net Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 9:42 pm

    Packet Whirl

    For an approximation of what a packet from this blog does before launching out onto the Internet and finding its way to you, see the Dreamhost video. (Not suitable for those who get carsick on roller coasters.)…

  16. vicm3 Says:
    November 8th, 2005 at 7:29 am

    Oh no the blair witch project again… oh wait.. no trees…

  17. phoenix Says:
    November 8th, 2005 at 7:30 am

    That was seriously the coolest thing ever. ^^

  18. Scott Says:
    November 9th, 2005 at 2:22 pm

    How’d you make that Flash video?

  19. Chris Says:
    November 10th, 2005 at 11:35 am

    In flash, you can import video and encode with the Sorensen codec to convert to flash. Lots of websites do stuff like this now days. Nascar.com off the top of my head does this on their homepage.

    Cool little video though. Looks like he almost dropped the camera half way through. Also.. why is there a giant CAGE around all the servers? Is that necessary?

    /would like to see an entire rack full of Xserves

  20. lbft Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 1:28 pm

    The cage is there to lock the DH staff in if they don’t answer those support requests fast enough ;)

  21. Chris Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 2:37 pm

    Must use the cage fairly often =)

  22. Will Says:
    November 11th, 2005 at 4:17 pm

    lbft, don’t be silly. We all know the cage is for the DreamHost monkeys!

    http://willscorner.net/mountweather/dh/dhmonkey.jpg
    http://willscorner.net/mountweather/dh/dhmonkey2.jpg

  23. Michael Schubart Says:
    November 12th, 2005 at 12:13 am

    Sorry for being a killjoy, but could you please not “run around the datacenter” that host my web site. Then again, it is a cool video…

  24. Michael Schubart Says:
    November 12th, 2005 at 12:14 am

    Sorry for being a killjoy, but could you please not “run around the datacenter” that hosts my web site. \

    Then again, it is a cool video…

  25. ad blog Says:
    November 13th, 2005 at 6:07 am

    Packet Run

    This is fun - running around a datacenter. (Interestingly, while other companies keep their datacenters top secretly sealed.)

  26. theMezz Says:
    November 13th, 2005 at 9:45 am

    Do you have a “slow” version of that for our networking class???

  27. Ian Says:
    November 14th, 2005 at 5:47 am

    I have seen two of your videos. You guys need to look at steady cam :-)

    Was that your data centre or did you break into your compeditors ;-)

  28. madethelflint Says:
    November 14th, 2005 at 3:40 pm

    an interesting song to go along with that video is the gorillaz’s “every planet we reach is dead” lol. it was on when i played that vid, and it was entertaining.

  29. Fergus Kelley Says:
    November 15th, 2005 at 10:28 pm

    I like to think that there’s some crazy guy frantic running around in the datacentre I host at, just waiting to trip over the cable that powers the server my website is on.

  30. Cjmovie Says:
    November 17th, 2005 at 7:51 pm

    Thats a lot of serving going on! To think one of those blinky lights was (possibly) indicating a request to my website…so cool!

  31. Mikhail Bozgounov Says:
    December 2nd, 2005 at 2:08 am

    Nice video!

    And think about I was just thinking of moving my website to dreamhost.com!! With such running people around with a camera, I am not already sure, if equipment there is actually very safe, LOL :-P

    Just joking, nice video and thnaks for showing us the servers rooms:)

  32. interlocutor Says:
    December 3rd, 2005 at 2:31 pm

    Wow! Thank you for video review! Now i’m also thinking of moving my website to dreamhost.com =)

  33. Tina Says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 12:00 pm

    Very much, very good project!!!

  34. Steph Says:
    December 13th, 2005 at 4:41 pm

    Lol. Awesome. I’d have to laugh if he tripped and fell into the equiptment >_

  35. Devin Lane Says:
    January 5th, 2006 at 7:27 pm

    So is everything in that datacenter Dreamhost’s? If so, that’s a HUGE server farm!

  36. n2kp3’s blog » Soy un datagrama y me estoy dando una vuelta por la red de dreamhost Says:
    January 25th, 2006 at 8:13 am

    [...] Link al post de dreamhost [...]

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