North American Network Operators Group
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RE: cooling door

  • From: Michael Loftis
  • Date: Tue Apr 01 18:52:47 2008



--On March 29, 2008 5:04:01 PM -0500 Frank Coluccio <[email protected]> wrote:


Michael Dillon is spot on when he states the following (quotation below),
although he could have gone another step in suggesting how the distance
insensitivity of fiber could be further leveraged:

The high speed fibre in Metro Area Networks will tie it all together
with the result that for many applications, it won't matter where
the servers are.


In fact, those same servers, and a host of other storage and network
elements, can be returned to the LAN rooms and closets of most commercial
buildings from whence they originally came prior to the large-scale data
center consolidations of the current millennium, once organizations
decide to free themselves of the 100-meter constraint imposed by
UTP-based LAN hardware and replace those LANs with collapsed fiber
backbone designs that attach to remote switches (which could be either
in-building or remote), instead of the minimum two switches on every
floor that has become customary today.

Yeah except in a lot of areas there is no MAN, and the ILECs want to bend you over for any data access. I've no idea how well the MAN idea is coming along in various areas, but you still have to pay for access to it somehow, and that adds to overhead. Which leads to attempt efficiency gains through centralization and increased density.

We often discuss the empowerment afforded by optical technology, but
we've barely scratched the surface of its ability to effect meaningful
architectural changes. The earlier prospects of creating consolidated
data centers were once near-universally considered timely and efficient,
and they still are in many respects. However, now that the problems
associated with a/c and power have entered into the calculus, some data
center design strategies are beginning to look more like anachronisms
that have been caught in a whip-lash of rapidly shifting conditions, and
in a league with the constraints that are imposed by the
now-seemingly-obligatory 100-meter UTP design.

In order for the MAN scenarios to work though access has to be pretty cheap, and fairly ubiquitous. Last i checked though making a trench was a very messy very expensive process. So MANs are great once they're installed but those installing/building them will want to recoup their large investments.