cooling door

Tue Apr 1 22:48:47 UTC 2008

--On March 29, 2008 5:04:01 PM -0500 Frank Coluccio 
<frank at dticonsulting.com> 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.