In creating Cloud Leverage, one of our biggest motivations is fixing the inherent problems of the Internet. As applications, video, voice-over IP, and other dynamic protocols become more and more prevalent, the traditional Internet is being stretched to its limits. In a study done by Cisco, and referenced on Dan Rayburn’s blog, Internet traffic is slated to grow 5x by 2013, and video will constitute 90% of overall traffic.
These are crazy statistics, and point back to a very core problem in content delivery… an antiquated architecture. This is a drawing that we point back to quite often when speaking with prospective clients:
It represents the original design for the Internet, scribbled on a napkin. This dates back to 1969, and the four nodes pictured are the University of California in Santa Barbara, Stanford Research Institute, UCLA, and the University of Utah. The test data transmitted between these machines was meaningless, but this breakthrough led to the formation of the Internet.
Here is a short history of the ensuing chain of events:
September 2, 1969: First time two computers communicated with each other (UCLA & SRI).
October 29, 1969: Message sent from computer to computer in different locations.
1971: The first email was sent.
January 1, 1983: ARPANET adopted the standard TCP/IP protocol.
March 1989: Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.
April 22, 1993: Mosaic became the first web browser.
And the rest is history.
The amazing thing is, however, that the Internet today is still built on those same foundations. It was designed as an experimental research network, and has been rigged in iterations to be what it is today. TCP and UDP are still the core protocols of the Internet and were designed to ensure reliable communication first, and speed of delivery second. Today, more than ever, speed matters just as much as reliability. People all over the world want to use the Internet for more than what it was designed for… they watch TV on the Internet, they use it to talk on the telephone and just like the adoption of IPv6 to ultimately replace IPV4 has been slow, changing how almost every device communicates across the Internet to a more superior set of protocols is probably impossible. These are the problems that inspired us to start this company, and these are the problems that we directly solve through Cloud Acceleration!
Jonathan Hoppe
