December 15, 2005

more thoughts on networking vendors' Grid opportunity

Cisco is not the only networking vendor making forays into areas that have typically been understood as "systems management." Networking is not just about 'pipes' and 'plumbing' anymore, it's much smarter than that. While Cisco's "application-oriented networking" product line launch yesterday is a great example -- it's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we're going to be hearing about from the networking vendors for the foreseeable future.

As we try to understand networking vendors' role in the Grid computing evolution, in particular, we have to start thinking of the network more anatomically and less like hardware. According to Dr. Franco Travostino, Consulting Engineer and Dir. in the Adv. Tech/CTO Office at Nortel:

"It's not just a matter of creating bigger pipes and expecting that we're going to have greater bandwidth. That will be one key ingredient, but not the only one. In addition to needing to blast as much data as possible, equally important there is the aspect of control of the network, so you can gain virtualized control and access to the network and do, for example, time of the day reservations if you need to - or be able to change the security properties, or the routing properties, or the service discovery properties. It's not about brute force and how many bits per second you can send - but also about how to finesse the network experience. We want to remove all sorts of GUI-driven and operator-driven elements so that the network can be controlled by software, and there are specific feedback loops going on between network and software, without operators involved. We want an addressing schema capable to support hitless joins in a virtual organization without collisions and impact from intervening network address translation boxes or firewalls. So there are very important features above and beyond the basic capability of sending a lot of data through a pipe."

What it is really coming down to is that we are going to have to start thinking of the network more like neurons in a biological sense and less like pipes in a plumbing sense.

Close

On Twitter now

Architecture

Powered by Twitter

On Twitter now

White Paper

D2D Virtual Tape Library Replication Primer

This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.

Download now »

White Paper

An Alternative to Virtualization for Datacenter Cost Savings

Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.

Download now »

White Paper

Why Your Firewall, VPN, and IEEE 802.11i Aren't Enough to Protect Your Network

The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.

Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation

Download now »

White Paper

Bringing the Edge to the Data Center

Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.

Download now »

Sign up to receive Architecture Resource Alerts

Subscribe to the Today's Headlines: First Look Newsletter

Find out what will be news for the day, with our first-thing-in-the-morning briefing.

©1994-2009 Infoworld, Inc.