Project Ramp-Up -- Post your observations or comments here

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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Topic 188271

I've been observing things, with just one cpu to test the waters so to speak and, last night, decided to add a couple more to the fold. They were added approximately 3 hours apart and they received IDs approx 400 apart. That translates to a very rough estimate of 3000 boxes per day being added.

The number of new users per day, according to the server status page, has been running close to 1000 for a few days now. The total number of users and total number of boxes are not that different so it is likely that most new users are adding a single box to start with (like me) and are then coming back at a later stage (like me) and adding significantly more. Seems to augur well for the project.

It would be nice to see a comment or two, perhaps through the front page news, of how BA views things since he threw open the doors. I'd be very interested in any comments on whether the "take-up" rate is greater or less than expected and whether or not there are likely to be server load problems if the current rate of adding new boxes is maintained. Maybe this information is out there somewhere and I just haven't seen it although I have been looking :).

Cheers,
Gary.

Bruce Allen
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Project Ramp-Up -- Post your observations or comments here

> I've been observing things, with just one cpu to test the waters so to speak
> and, last night, decided to add a couple more to the fold. They were added
> approximately 3 hours apart and they received IDs approx 400 apart. That
> translates to a very rough estimate of 3000 boxes per day being added.
>
> The number of new users per day, according to the server status page, has been
> running close to 1000 for a few days now. The total number of users and total
> number of boxes are not that different so it is likely that most new users are
> adding a single box to start with (like me) and are then coming back at a
> later stage (like me) and adding significantly more. Seems to augur well for
> the project.
>
> It would be nice to see a comment or two, perhaps through the front page news,
> of how BA views things since he threw open the doors. I'd be very interested
> in any comments on whether the "take-up" rate is greater or less than expected
> and whether or not there are likely to be server load problems if the current
> rate of adding new boxes is maintained. Maybe this information is out there
> somewhere and I just haven't seen it although I have been looking :).

I'll add a news item later today. It's timely, since it's now two weeks since we went public.

Bruce

Director, Einstein@Home

Joe Rhodes
Joe Rhodes
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The number of new users here

The number of new users here is inflated because Seti is down for the weekend and has been very unreliable of late. I have started about 12 computers on E@H in the last few days.
I like the E@H project and will continue to support it even after Seti gets its act together.

[BOINCstats] Willy
[BOINCstats] Willy
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Number of users went from

Number of users went from about 3000 to 21000 in one month (februari).

That is about 650 new users a day. These are only users that have been granted credit. There may well be a 1000 users a day that sign up but don't have any credit yet.

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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> That is about 650 new users

Message 7104 in response to message 7103

> That is about 650 new users a day. These are only users that have been granted
> credit. There may well be a 1000 users a day that sign up but don't have any
> credit yet.

Thanks very much for that. Sort of kills the myth about largely made up of escapees from Seti as the smooth upward ramp was well established and showed no subsequent deviation when the Seti power problems really started to bite. I was away overseas at the time but didn't the doors open around 19/20 Feb? This would explain nicely the sudden upswing after that time.

It will be very interesting to see this graph again in about a weeks time when the effect of this "Seti Dry" weekend will have made its mark. Once again great stuff!!

Cheers,
Gary.

Redshift
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> we estimate that it has

> we estimate that it has the capacity to handle about ten times the current
> number of users, hosts and workunits

What type of hardware/OS is einstein.phys.uwm.edu?

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stlforsale.com

Jordan Wilberding
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> > we estimate that it has

Message 7106 in response to message 7105

> > we estimate that it has the capacity to handle about ten times the
> current
> > number of users, hosts and workunits
>
>
> What type of hardware/OS is einstein.phys.uwm.edu?
>

According tp netcraft, they are running Fedora:

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=einstein.phys.uwm.edu

such things just should not be writ so please destroy this if you wish to live 'tis better in ignorance to dwell than to go screaming into the abyss worse than hell

Bruce Allen
Bruce Allen
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> > we estimate that it has

Message 7107 in response to message 7105

> > we estimate that it has the capacity to handle about ten times the
> current
> > number of users, hosts and workunits
>
>
> What type of hardware/OS is einstein.phys.uwm.edu?

Dual processor Xeon Box with 3.4 GHz CPUs, 8 GB of memory, and 4 TB of disk space. Disk controllers are a pair of 3ware 9500 8-port SATA controller cards. OS is Linux. This currently runs all the BOINC back-end processing (scheduler, apache, transitioner, validator, upload/download server, database, etc).

In the next several weeks we are taking delivery of a 4-processor Opteron box with 8 GB of memory and 24 SATA disks on two 12-port 3ware 9500 controllers. That will be used as a database server (only).

Cheers,
Bruce

Director, Einstein@Home

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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> That is about 650 new users

Message 7108 in response to message 7103

> That is about 650 new users a day. These are only users that have been granted
> credit. There may well be a 1000 users a day that sign up but don't have any
> credit yet.

I've resurrected this old thread because I'm interested in how this project continues to ramp up. [BOINCstats] Willy's graph (5 messages earlier than this one) continues to update itself and seems to be remarkably free from influence by the power problems experienced by Seti a week or two ago. There were suggestions that other projects were unduly benefitting at that time and that the numbers would shrink once Seti solved its problems.

A close look at the graph seems to suggest that the gradual curving over to a steady state limit has stopped and that a virtual straight line is being drawn from about March 10 onwards. That straight line increase seems to be about 470 new users achieving credit per day.

One thing that puzzles me though (and I guess the answer is really the fickleness of the human species) is the fact that consistently far more people join per day than achieve first credit per day. Why do so many people go to the trouble of joining the project and then never complete even the first result? Do people lose interest that quickly or is there some other explanation.

Anyway, it's probably time for the project admins to do a bit of conspicuous marketing in order to get that graph curving up again :). They could do a two for one deal and give all users who achieve their first cobblestones double points for a limited time only and then they could throw a sweetener to the existing users (so as not to stir them up too much) by having a bonus points deal for introducing a friend :).

Let's face it, E@H needs a marketing guru to step in and up the pace a bit :).

Cheers,
Gary.

Paul D. Buck
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> One thing that puzzles me

Message 7109 in response to message 7108

> One thing that puzzles me though (and I guess the answer is really the
> fickleness of the human species) is the fact that consistently far more people
> join per day than achieve first credit per day. Why do so many people go to
> the trouble of joining the project and then never complete even the first
> result? Do people lose interest that quickly or is there some other
> explanation.

I can think of two answers right off.

The first is that with my fastest machine taking 10 hours for a Einstein@Home Work Unit, that some people that join don't complete that first work Unit until the second or third day.

Second, that they get over-whelmed by BOINC and get lost in the weeds rying to get going. So, they join, but then never go anywhere.

Without an investigation it is hard to tell what it is.

STE\/E
STE\/E
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I think a lot of people are

I think a lot of people are just joining to use Einstein or LHC etc just to use them as a backup project. I think this because of all the complaints I see about the 7 day deadline & that their PC's can't finish the WU's on time plus the fact a few of them have stated as much that Einstein and other projects are nothing more than backup's for when Seti has problems ...

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