New Internet Traffic Study

The gist of this study (by Arbor Networks, the University of Michigan and Merit Network) is that Internet traffic has been shifting from moderately fast connections with a relatively large number of servers to fast connections with a relatively small number of servers. This has apparently been driven by (among other things) the rising amount of video being watched. So, if this seems like a problem, blame YouTube.

Some thoughts I had after reading this:

• Some of this may be accounted for by the movement of Internet-facing servers to server farms, away from on-site servers. Which makes sense: having a popular Web server on your company's WAN connection is inviting a sort of inadvertent, non-malicious DDoS attack.
• Fewer systems representing the majority of the traffic on the Internet means fewer points of failure. Which means these "Hyper Giants" (the term used in the study summary) had best keep the systems and planning for their security, disaster recovery and redundancy up to snuff. Take a look at Telecom Risk and Security Part 2 – The Carrier Hotel SuperNode | Virtualization Journal or Verizon router glitch slams parts of U.S. to get an idea of what can go wrong with too few points of failure.
• Having applications on the Web is convenient, but it also means that people outside of your organization now have direct influence over your ability to use those applications. This might be something like Google suffering an Gmail outage or a backhoe operator digging in the wrong spot.

Here's the link to the Arbor Networks report:

Two-Year Study of Global Internet Traffic Will Be Presented At NANOG47 | Arbor Networks

Here's a PC World article on the same subject:

Unknown 'Superpower' Hosts Dominate Internet Traffic, Study Says - Business Center - PC World

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Army Mechanic's Garage Tinkering Yields 18-Foot Mecha Exoskeleton | Popular Science

I have nothing much to add, except that I have wanted one of these for a long time. The inventor and builder, Carlos Owens, has more details on his web site at http://neogentronyx.com/.

Army Mechanic's Garage Tinkering Yields 18-Foot Mecha Exoskeleton | Popular Science
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Miller-McCune Article | Pentagon, Others Start Ramping Up For Climate Change | Miller-McCune Online Magazine

If you don't know about Miller-McCune, you might try giving them a read. They are quite research-oriented for a news magazine, and do a pretty good job of objective reporting with in-depth articles. Here is a link to one that caught my interest.

Politics Articles | Pentagon, Others Start Ramping Up For Climate Change | Miller-McCune Online Magazine

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That the military would be interested in what is happening (or likely going to happen) to terrain around the world is not surprising to me, nor should it be to anyone who has read The Art of War.

Satellite Launch

Drove up to see the satellite launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base on 10/8/2009. I believe it was a Motorola satellite on a Boeing rocket. Yes, I need to get a better camera, but this phone camera is better than my last one.

Light Peak: Fiber Optics for Computer Peripherals

I found this article in the New York Times. It's an interesting development from Intel called Light Peak, and I'm curious to see if it takes off. This technology would provide a very fast data connection for computer peripherals and other electronic devices. One area that might benefit from this would be servers with massive external storage. Here are the pros and cons I can think of right offhand.

Pros:

• Much faster than the current standard for computer peripheral connections, USB 2.0, which is capable of 480 Mbps (megabits per second), as opposed to Light Peak, which is presently capable of 10Gbps (gigabits per second, which translates to 10,000 megabits per second in this case - it's FAST). Also faster than FireWire (400 or 800 Mbps), which I know some systems, like my adorable MacBook, have from the get-go, but still isn't a standard the way USB has become.
• Minimizes electronic interference because optical connections can't really act as antennas for electromagnetic signals.
• Reduces the risk of damage from electrostatic discharge or power spikes by preventing grounding across the peripheral connection. This risk can't be completely eliminated, because the power connection for the peripheral will likely be on the same circuit as the rest of the computer system, and will thus provide a potential path for electrical mayhem. Speaking of power supplies, that leads me to...

Cons:

• As of yet, scientists have not found a way to send electrical power over fiber optic lines (in fact, the lack of the ability to do so is one of the major benefits of fiber optics when linking structures with different ground potentials.) So, you can't power your peripherals using fiber optics, which is one of the very handy things that USB does. What this means is that you will need a separate power adapter for any device connected to a computer via fiber optics.
• Like most other standards, a certain critical mass of users would need to start using this technology for it to become worth supporting. Existing workstations and servers could be retrofitted with it fairly simply, but laptops would be unlikely to be easily retrofitted (since PCMCIA is beginning to vanish from them.) It would take a major manufacturer deciding to take a gamble on the technology and start installing it on all of the new computers it builds for a good chance at success. But that has happened before, when Apple went to all-USB peripherals on the original iMac.

I know I put a lot of hyperlinks in this post, but I'm trying out the features of Blogger here, and I also believe that hypertext is most valuable when it is readily available.

Bits: Shuttling PC Data at the Speed of Light

By By Brooke Crothers

Published: October 5, 2009

A new technology from Intel called Light Peak could increase data transmission speeds inside a PC by a factor of 20 and eliminate the need for most of the device connectors found on today's machines.