Broadband initiatives - impact to your network?

[jf at feldman.org (Jonathan Feldman)]

I'm one of the reporters who covers broadband and cloud computing for  
InformationWeek magazine (www.informationweek.com), and it's  
interesting to me that one of the issues with cloud adoption has to do  
with the limited pipe networks available in this country. For example,  
it's not feasible to do a massive data load through the networks that  
are currently available -- you need to FedEx a hard drive to Amazon.   
Holy cow, it's SneakerNet for the 21st Century!

Initiatives like the federal BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunity  
Program) and Google's infamous (and so far invisible) fiber program  
promise to change, by orders of magnitude, the pipe that's available  
to most folks, and therefore change equations like SneakerNet for  
cloud loads.  Surely the backbone will also need to be much more  
capacious, with middle mile changes like this.

I am interested in hearing from folks on this list about the impacts  
that these programs are having on your network build-out and  
management plans.  I'm also interested in hearing your perspective on  
real network management issues that could either be caused by or fixed  
by proposed FCC regulation of broadband.

I don't have a political axe to grind, and I know that broadband is  
something of a political issue right now.  But there are pragmatics  
that data center managers and CIOs have to deal with every day, and  
knowing what's coming up on the national broadband agenda is becoming  
more and more important.

You can reply to me either on-list, or off-list (jf at feldman.org) if  
you want to remain anonymous. My deadline is Monday, close of business  
(5pm ET).  Thanks so much for your perspective.

--Jonathan

Jonathan Feldman
Contributing Editor, InformationWeek
http://www.informationweek.com
Twitter: @_jfeldman