Gregory Ness of Infoblox has a vision for our future computer network infrastructure: Infrastructure 2.0. Gregory points out that the next-generation infrastructure needs to be more dynamic in order to cope with the demands of our cloudified, virtualized new computing world.
As Google (GOOG), Microsoft, Amazon (AMZN) and others push the envelope with massive virtualization-enabled cloudplexes revitalizing small town economies – and whomever else rides the clouds – they will continue to pressure the world of Infrastructure1.0. More sophisticated systems will require more intelligent networks. That simple premise is the biggest threat today to network infrastructure players.
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A dynamic infrastructure would empower a new level of synergy between new endpoint and system initiatives (consolidation, compliance, mobility, virtualization, cloud) and open new markets for existing and emerging infrastructure players. Cisco, Juniper, F5 Networks, Riverbed and others who benefited from the evolving collisions between TCP/IP and applications could then benefit from the rise of virtualization and enterprise and service provider versions of cloud, versus watching it from the sidelines.
Lori MacVittie has replied on behalf of F5:
Some appliances and network devices have long been able to look inside servers and dynamically keep up with the rapid changes occurring in a hypervisor-driven application infrastructure. We call one of those capabilities “intelligent health monitoring”, for example, and others certainly have their own special name for a similar capability.
IPv6?
Interestingly, the features that Gregory Ness describes for Infrastructure 2.0 (more dynamic reachability and visibility) sound somewhat familiar. Isn’t this the main idea behind IPv6 with cool features like stateless auto-configuration, a nearly endless address space, protocol-inherent security and control management mechanisms, etc.? No need for NATs and manual network addressing any more. Or am I getting something wrong?
It is indeed astonishing that after all these years TCP/IP (with some modifications) still works. The reason is the end-to-end principle that makes our Internet scale so well. Time to get rid off IPv4…
