Johna Til Johnson: Eye on the Carriers

The innovation gap is real, all right

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-09-03T00:00:00Z

Recently Judy Estrin, former Cisco CTO and current Silicon Valley luminary, published a book called Closing the Innovation Gap. I haven’t read it (yet), but she reportedly argues that the United States has what she calls a “national innovation deficit” — specifically, a shortage of overall investment in science and engineering. According to a recent article, Google’s Vint Cerf, one of the primary inventors of the Internet, agrees.

The many modes of communication

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-08-27T00:00:00Z

Your E911 strategy, remote access policies and more depend on examining what "communication" means

Buying bandwidth for fun and profit

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-08-13T00:00:00Z

You've got to hand it to the Canadians. Not only do they come up with great hockey, outstanding comedians and my friend Dave Keck (an up-and-coming science fiction writer) they've also generated one of the most innovative ideas ever for last-mile connectivity.

FCC right to tell Comcast: Hands off

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-08-06T00:00:00Z

Regular readers of this column know I take a nuanced view when it comes to net neutrality: On one hand, carriers shouldn’t be limiting or blocking traffic based on source, destination or traffic type, with the exception of traffic that clearly represents a hazard to the network or its users (such as malicious code attacking routers). On the other hand, providers have a right to charge differentiated rates for differentiated services, and users should choose whether they want best effort, guaranteed delivery or something in between. And providers should be able to charge heavy users rates commensurate with their usage.

Crafting a WAN? Consider the edges

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-07-31T00:00:00Z

Many IT executives consider the WAN to be a monolithic entity: a giant network that connects all the organization's sites across a common infrastructure.

The carrier commodity conundrum

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-07-22T00:00:00Z

We all know that these days, bandwidth is "free." Specifically, it's a commodity service whose cost is so low that it's no longer a significant component of telecom costs.

Building a new data center? Think WAN

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-07-16T00:00:00Z

Practically every company I talk with is consolidating data centers, constructing new ones, or both. These aren't the old "glass house" models of the 1980s and 1990s: They're next-generation designs with racks of blade servers, virtualized clusters and storage-area networks.

Don't be pooh-poohing social networking

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-07-10T00:00:00Z

A while back, I wrote about the concept of social networking. The upshot: Although the wisdom of crowds may be overhyped, the phenomenon of social networking isn't.

Going green, virtually speaking

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

Broadly speaking, there are two main reasons for companies to go green. The first is to reduce energy costs, thereby saving the company money. As one IT executive put it to me recently, "Green computing is all about saving greenbacks."

Does your phone make you smarter?

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-06-26T00:00:00Z

We've been hearing a lot lately about how communications technology reduces productivity and makes people stupider — mainly by interrupting people too often, in too many ways. Some studies have gone so far as to quantify the decline in productivity (25% to 30%) due to multitasking. These researchers imply that we'd all be better off turning off our phones, shutting down instant messaging and e-mail, and logging out of Facebook, MySpace and Linked-In. I think they're nuts.