Comments on: Let’s make data centers obsolete

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:42:46 +0000

Richard: Actually, it pays to “warehouse” it briefly even when it goes to a few people. When we send e-mail, for example, an upstream server “warehouses” the data long enough to distribute the copies to the individual recipients. It also protects against spam. (We all know what “any to any” connectivity did to the medium of e-mail until we got sensible and insisted that users transmit their mail through servers. If we hadn’t done that, e-mail would already be completely useless.)

Scott: The fact is that a server across the country is almost certain to be “closer,” network-wise, to someone on a different ISP in Texas than you are. And if you are only sending a few copies of something to a relative (Interesting how often P2Pers claim that this is what they’re doing!), the impact of one file traveling a few extra miles is negligible compared to the impact of P2P. In fact, without the congestion caused by P2P, it’ll get through a lot faster locally.

As for the location of the “middle”: it consists of major Internet hubs, peering points, co-location centers, and backbone facilities. The Palo Alto Internet Exchange, located in an unassuming former telephone building on Ramona Street in downtown Palo Alto, California, is probably the most important of these.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:35:44 +0000

Brett, why would I want to send my stuff to California or North Carolina for use by people who are exclusively in Texas? Seriously, why waste the bandwidth? It can be used for something else, like Euro-porn, or people in North Carolina uploading family photos.

There is no repeatedly here, either. None. I’m not running a global enterprise with 25/8 worker drones, I’m showing my mom her great-grandkids playing in the sprinkler Or showing my primary customer the layout of his network. All of whom are right here in 200 or 300 fiber miles (and often way less), not thousands.

BTW, where is the middle? It’s a cloud, or pretty dang close to what I always imagined.

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:08:23 +0000

How often is repeatedly? If the content only goes to a few people, most of them friends and family, it’s not worth the trouble to warehouse it remotely.

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:09:01 +0000

Any content that originates at the edge can (and should be) sent to the middle for widespread distribution. It costs far too much, and involves too much latency and other overhead, to send it from the edge repeatedly.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:09:14 +0000

I hope you document your prototype. I’ve been fooling around with edge/home/media servers for the last 12 months in off-hours. I haven’t gotten anywhere with it, because I’ve got higher-priority things to do, but the potential is easy to see. I can see plenty of things that I’d rather keep on a mirrored edge server. Google Docs for my biz, for one tiny example.