Hi Jay,
You think so? To me, it sounds like a distributed main frame with no one in charge. I've seen only limited examples of what the I2 can do, and it's nowhere near what these authors have suggested.
I believe I2's major public accomplishment to date has been to produce a video link with service level guarantees from somewhere here in the states to Geneva that approximates an E1 (~2 Mb/s) video conferencing line for medical applications. I believe we posted that release here about six weeks ago somewhere upstream.
Today, as things stand, a large ISP will operate its hundreds of POPs independently, with each one having their own servers in a sovereign way. It's not inconceivable to me that such a large SP, say, as CAIS or UUnet, would at some point orchestrate all of their POPs under a sigle distributed operating system-like environment.
With regards to traffic management and various other functions, this is already happening in some cases.
I'm not talking about IOS (Cisco's Internetworking Operatin System), specifically, since IOS tends to be routing and transport layers specific, for the most part, although, in principle, that is a good example if extended to the entire stack.
But what does this form of top down management do for advancing the "stupid network" principle? Not much, I'd say, if controls and surveillance, not to mention actual computational tasks, are to become centralized. And is that really such a bad thing? [Not citing or implying an opinion, only soliciting comments.]
Contract, expand, contract, expand. Centralize, distribute, centralize, distribute. We've seen this all before. If all processes revolve around this principle of cyclical patterns, have we reached a pinnacle yet through the use of distributed platforms, and is it not time that we return to a more centralized approach? Or, has cyclicity run its course in this regard?
Does this come down to economics, or a desire to be free from centralized controls? Maybe a case can be made for economies of scale here in order to justify building the grid. Whose economies? Whose scale? Does someone have a networked calculator they can lend me some time on? |
