The Data Center: What Is a Good Network?

By John Rath

September 15, 2008 —  (Page 1 of 3)

A recent question on LinkedIn asked, “What is a good network?” Normally I would have dismissed that because it was too vague to even think about answering. The answers mainly focused on the “-ities” (as I call them): reliability, scalability and flexibility. Don’t get me wrong, those are all good qualities, but they are also generic marketing terms that can be interpreted a number of ways.

Most of the respondents on LinkedIn answered in the context of a local business or business branch that had a T1 (1.544Mb/sec) or other account with a carrier. When I think about what a “good” network is, I naturally migrate to what would be good for a data center environment.

Start with OC-3 (155Mb/sec) and work up to OC-192 (9,953Mb/second) and beyond. While the size of the pipe may differ for office vs. data center environments, don’t underestimate the office connection. As it relates to my previous cloud computing columns, if your applications, platform or entire infrastructure is in the cloud, it won’t do a bit of good if your employees can’t reach it because the office network is down. Complete a thorough analysis of how office connectivity should be architected based on the needs of the business.

The LinkedIn answers also confirmed my initial thought that the real answer to the question depends on what the business needs or wants to accomplish with its network. A few columns back, I wrote about the massive networks Microsoft and Google have in place to connect their equally sized data centers. Unless you have a few billion dollars lying around, I think one of the top ingredients of a good network is knowledge of and working relationships with carriers.

There are some excellent opportunities to work with dark fiber providers and connect data centers that way. The need for dark fiber vs. a connection from various carriers again goes back to what you will use the network for and what kind of uptime, control, price, security and scalability you need. Large companies such as Ford Motor, Bank of America, Bausch & Lomb and Gannett have their own fiber networks, an approach that fits their needs better.

Related Search Term(s): cables, cloud computing, data centers, networking

Share this link: http://www.sysmannews.com/link/32851