Mitch, that's a good analogy. I beleive that the Internet has become so central to our lives, that some of us are ready to pay a little more for it, if we're going to get more.
Picture your cup of coffee 20 years ago. Now picture your most recent Starbucks order!
Andrew - thanks for taking the time to talk with us. You've inspired me to buy your book (suppose that was the point of the talk). The Kindle version, not the collectable one listed for $100 on Amazon.
Kim - Ha! We crossed messages there. Yes, airlines are very opaque but it outrages us. when Internet networks are opaque, we are more inclined to tolerate it.
Andrew, you were talking during our interview about the networks being held accountable. It occurs to me that this is a way that air travel is similar, and we demaind more accountability of airlines. Most of the time, if we fly from new York to Los Angeles, we don't care about the route or eve the kind of plane. but if there's a delay, we insist on knowing why.
One of my "tour guides" to NANOG just wrote this really nice desciprtion of my interaction with the community: http://community.brocade.com/community/brocadeblogs/service_providers/blog/2012/07/18/new-book-tubes-a-journey-to-the-center-of-the-internet
In many respects the Internet is similar to the network of roads, or commercial air, or even shipping. It ties the world together, and it was built by small pieces coming together, rather than through central planning.
Mary, they are a very smart group. And waht's interesting is that they're all about relationships. Their focus is the INTER in internet. They exist to connect -- literally! -- with others.
Google has shaped their service to chinese users inorder to keep in touch with the chinese market, this is revenue driven to survive in a planned economy, what a mix, lol.
Mary, the NANOGers are my stars. I describe my visit to the NANOG conference in Tubes, and their importance in running the internet. (And I suppose a few of their quirks as well ;) )
Kim, somehwere in between. I came away very impressed with the abilities of the network engineers who run the Internet. And I also have a lot of respect for the Internet as the ultimate "emergent" system -- designed not by any single organization, but arising out of the thousands of collective decisions. It's a fascinating model.
@fieldengineer - There needs to be a balance between, on the one hand, the government operating in the public interest, stepping in where the market fails, and, on the other hand, businesses pursuing their own and their customers' best interests. Usually, when people say, "there needs to be a balance," I respond, "Get your hand out of my pocket and your camera out of my bedroom," but in this case I think the statement is warranted.
Mitch, some definitely looked like the back of a shopping mall. But a few were quite beautiful. 60 Hudson is amazing -- it was built as Western Union's HQ in 1930. And Facebook's data center is a remarkbal piece of modern architcetre.
Google has an extremely high profile when it comes to peering. They have hired the best "peering coordinators" in the business, and because they generate so much traffic (Youtube!), they are the elephant in any room.
Mitch, it is Google. I find their stance towards all of our understanding to be very strange for the ultimate information company! I wrote about that recently, in a piece called" "Google Thinks You're Stupid."
Lin, it was really all about process. As a journalist I saw my job as to determine the most important places, and visit them as efficiently as possible, in order to write the book as soon as possible and keep it timely. I visited nearly fifty diferent data centers in N. America and Europe. I didn't wanted to waste my "ammo" on access for 111 8th, when I knew it was quite similar to 60 Hudson. I preferred to save my energy and google's for their Oregon data center.
Kim asks: "Could private owners of the tubes close the Internet if they chose to? Or is too disparate a network for any one owner to shut it down?"
-- in grand philosophical terms, since the Internet is a network of networks you only need two to make a "new Internet." Practically speaking, I'd say the whole enterprise depends on a healthy diversity of networks. Which means we should be cautious of one network growing too large. (And can you guess which one i might have in mind???)
Lin, I spent a lot of time in both Equinix and Telx's other facilities in NY, Virginia, and California, but I did not seek access to the exchange point at 111 8th ave.
I think I heard that you were not given total access to a Google facility in Oregon. Did you ask to see the internals in their NY hub (the building Google bought several years).
In terms of the interne't vulnerability, I think that the physical pieces are actually quite robust. There are redundant physical links, redundant exchange points, substantial security, etc. The greater risk to the Internet is 1) the "cyber" threat and 2) -- and I mean this a bit tongue in cheek -- legislation.
For instance, I know that most of the "root servers" are located in the US. But aren't there some other points where important servers are under threat?
The interesting thing to remember is that the Internet is 100% privately owned. There is no "pubvlic internet." So ownership is always an issue in some ways. The conference in Dubai in December is the International Telecom Unions attempt to -- perhaps -- regulate the interent as they ahve telephone charges. But the good news is, my sources in the industry say it probably won't amount to much.
I was wondering -- I know there's a big international telecoms conference coming up this year -- whether ownership of these cables could become an issue.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
