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Subject:Re: Need a word for... From:Mike Starr <mike -at- writestarr -dot- com> To:'techwr-l List' <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:55:04 -0600
I might be inclined to describe it has having "unpredictable availability."
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+steve -dot- janoff=teradata -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+steve -dot- janoff=teradata -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com]
> On Behalf Of McLauchlan, Kevin
> Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 6:37 AM
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: Need a word for...
>
>
> Once again, I'm turning to the Techwr-l "reverse-lookup-dictionary" for
> a term that I'm pretty sure exists, but which is eluding me at present.
>
> Is there a general, or engineering, term for a condition where something
> is dropped/stopped and retries/resumes, but it happens so frequently and
> rapidly that it's annoying (or a drag on resources)?
>
> It's not "jitter", but a word of that sort.
>
> It's not a "race condition" - two signals or events 'racing' each other
> to determine an outcome... but sorta in the neighborhood.
>
> With that said, here's the situation.
>
> Picture a group of networked devices in a High Availability cluster
> configuration. They take part in load balancing, and they synchronize
> constantly to back each other up, in the event that one or more fails in
> some way. Now imagine they're geographically dispersed. Now imagine that
> the internet trunk from one country is flaky. It goes in. It goes out.
> It has its good days. It has its bad days. But the result is that the
> clustered appliance that lives at the other end of it can sometimes be
> dropping out and rejoining a _lot_. Possibly to the point - if that
> network segment gets bad enough - that the unit is being dropped out
> even faster than it can rejoin (with all the necessary handshaking). So,
> perhaps the customers request a settable "rejoin delay", such that the
> member can be told to take a breather (of a specified length) before
> attempting to rejoin.
>
> What would be a good generic word for the sort of condition where
> something is being rapidly/frequently disconnected and keeps dutifully
> coming back for more punishment? I imagine there's a common english
> word that engineers have co-opted for such a situation - perhaps a
> two-word phrase at most. It's not quite at the tip of my tongue - or
> my typing fingers. Bugs me no end.
>
> Anybody?
>
>
> Kevin McLauchlan
> Senior Technical Writer
> SafeNet, Inc.
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