Today Cisco announced a series of updated Integrated Services Router (ISR G2) products for branch office applications. The ISR line has been on the market for over 5 years now and we've been expecting new branch products from Cisco for quite some time. And since this announcement follows the release of our own award winning SRX Series Services Gateways for the branch by a couple of quarters, I could be accused of being more interested than most . Read more...

Space is the most fundamental characteristic of the universe we live in. If we existed in an infinitely small singularity, the need for networks would not exist. However, we do not, and as a result the resources of the universe are scattered and continually rearranged in four dimensional spacetime. As we scatter and rearrange ourselves in four dimensional spacetime we take our own organic storage, processing, transfer, process/applications, information, and energy resources with us (our brains and bodies), and we often complement those resources with computer-based resources that are capable of operating over large distances. As we look for greater productivity, efficiencies, and lower costs we also explore the benefits of centralized processing which our distributed and increasingly mobile terminals connect to. As we go about utilizing all these resources we have to consider the fifth dimension of economics, the sixth dimension of consumption preference, the seventh dimension of cultural/political preference, and no doubt countless other dimensions as well. Read more...

In the next entry I will conclude this series of thoughts on network value. First I would like to say a few things about mobility and security. Read more...

In order for network value to grow over time there must be a constructive tension between the productivity of known forms of value and the discovery of new forms of value, i.e. between productive efficiency and allocative efficiency (see Network Value III - Allocative Efficiency). One way to achieve that is to have a constructive tension between managed services (services where there is a strong link between service quality, resource allocation, security, and customer experience), and unmanaged services (where the emphasis is on shared resources, openness, and adhoc discovery). Read more...

Much of business is about improving the economics of forms of value that have already been discovered; enabling known valuable combinations of resources to come together faster, cheaper, and in greater supply; in other words productive efficiency. Healthy systems are not only efficient in how they use resources but they are also efficient in what they allocate resources to, ensuring resources are allocated in the most valuable way (in accordance with consumer wishes). The orthodox understanding of market systems is that the price system ensures that resources are allocated in the most valuable ways. Consumers pay the most for what they value the most and then they make marginal purchases for other things they value less. Putting aside for now arguments about the distortions caused by monopolies, imperfect information, regulation, and various views on socially optimal pricing, there is the more fundamental issue of how do consumers discover value in the first place? Read more...

The average frequency of information being accurate, sufficient, and timely is one way to look at productivity. Expanding and extending those thoughts in this entry I want to look at the three fundamental economic layers (as opposed to protocol layers) of any network, namely: capacity, capacity management, and capacity usage. Read more...

Having discussed some of the esoteric information principles that underlay all information networks, the next few posts will focus on network value. There are many sources of network value, but I am going to start by extrapolating from the issues I discussed in the last post: Information is not relative. Read more...

There is much to admire and appreciate about physics, but there are times I am glad I do not have to operate within the constraints physicists operate under in the natural world. For example, information network engineers and architects have significant influence over what information exists within a network and therefore significant influence over the realities of that network. Read more...

1) Time is space. 2) Time is the cost of space. 3) One of the inherent values of networks is overcoming this cost. 4) The rate at which information is injected and received impacts the cost of space. 5) The amount of space between information resources impacts the cost of space. Read more...

In this blog entry I will finish up some definitions and descriptions of the fundamental resources of an information network, and then having done so will move to discuss the implications for network architecture in future blog entries. Read more...

After describing the view that Information is State in the last entry, I want to make one more point about information before leaving the subject and discussing other resource types. That point is that while information can seem to have only one "value" or one "meaning" it often has many, and therefore its value is often multi-dimensional. Poems often provide a good example of this. In the "concrete" poem below, a "cloud" is described in words, but also pictured by the shape the words are arranged in. Now in this case the shape matches the way clouds are depicted in network diagrams and not how computing, storage, and networking resources are actually physically laid out, but you get the point. Read more...

In this entry I would explain my rationale for incorporating the following concepts in to my view of information networks: a) Information is a separate and recognizable resource category distinct from storage, transfer, and processing (described in future blog entries). b) What is "state" depends on the encoding mechanism used by a process c) All state is information d) State with meaning is meaningful information Read more...

In this blog we will discuss various approaches to network architecture; the drivers, the impacts, etc. Before getting in to the nuts and bolts of network architecture it is important to first lay a foundation - the value of a network. Read more...