The ONF may just have done something very smart. It’s been clear for at least a decade that operators want to buy products rather than just endorsing standards, but how do the products develop in an open-source world where no single player fields a total solution? The ONF says that the answer to that is…
Could we be missing something fundamental in IT and network design? Everyone knows that the focus of good design is creating good outcomes, but should at least equal attention to preventing bad outcomes? A LinkedIn contact of mine who’s contributed some highly useful (and exceptionally thoughtful) comments sent me a reference on “Design for Prevention”…
How would a separate control plane for IP work? What would it facilitate? It’s pretty obvious that if you were to separate the control and data planes of IP, you could tune the implementation of each of these independently, creating the basis for a disaggregated model of routing versus the traditional node-centric IP approach, but…
Cisco is facing a revolution that would totally change their business model, a revolution that will devalue traditional routers. They’re already seeing the signs of a business revolution, in fact. Thus, the question isn’t whether they’ll respond (they must) but how they’ll respond, and where that response might lead the rest of the industry. To…
Sometimes the real story in something is deeper than the apparent news. Nobody should be surprised by the decision by AT&T to suspend any new DSL broadband connections. This is surely proof that DSL is dead, even for the skeptics, but DSL isn’t the real issue. The real issue is what’s behind the AT&T decision,…
The news that IBM will spin off its managed infrastructure services business into a new company created a pop for its stock, but what does this mean (if anything) for the IT market? In particular, what does it mean for cloud computing? It’s not as simple as it might seem. The basic coverage theme for…
I know I talk a lot about “demand density” in my blogs, so much that you could think I’m saying it’s the essential underpinning of network evolution. Well, it kind of is. The future of networking is written in dollars, not in bits, and demand density is the fundamental dollar reality. I’ve been working through…
Vendors are finally discovering the virtue of opex reduction. Cisco has included the network sector in its overall AI/ML strategy, complementing “intent-based networks”. Juniper’s Mist AI deal, combined with their recent acquisition of Netrounds, shows that they’re looking at more ways to apply automation, testing, monitoring, and other stuff that qualifies as operations automation. The…
Where is the best place to host computing power? Answer: Where it’s needed. Where’s the most economical place? Answer: Probably not where it’s needed. The dilemma of the cloud, then, is how to balance optimality in QoE and the business case. I’m going to propose that this dilemma changes the nature of the cloud, and…
Do you think that core routing is just for big routers? Think again. DriveNets, a startup who developed a “Network Cloud” cloud-routing solution and AT&T co-announced (HERE and HERE) that DriveNets “is providing the software-based core routing solution for AT&T, the largest backbone in the US.” That could fairly be called a blockbuster announcement (covered…