> >used to be, yes.  at this point it's merely an urban legend.
> 
> well...i'd have to prove that to myself to be certain.

suit yourself.  for 70K files it's absolutely measurably not much slower
than for 5 files.  (independent verification would be appreciated.)

> i'm just curious...would it be trivial to modify these tools to use a
> hierarchical arrangement of files a directories as well (eg, instead
> of opening file "1234567", one would open "12/34/567")?  i'd be
> curious to see the difference there, since that was the usual attack
> against the problem.

yes, since the key is an IP address, there's a version of the test that
puts 192.5.5.241.txt into 192/5/5/241.txt.  makes absolutely no difference
to the baseline, but does increase the randomness of the timing.