Conference keynote address by CEO at Extreme Networks (2000)
A few months ago, I read an article about a man named John Smith. Innocent enough
name, right? Probably everyone here has known a John Smith at one time or another.
But this is no ordinary John Smith. This is the former world-record holder in the 440-yard
dash. This John Smith is arguably the premier sprint coach in the world. Maurice Greene,
Ato Bolden, Jon Drummond, Inger Miller, Marie-Jose Perec – world record holders,
Olympic champions, they all come to Los Angeles to work with him.
Because John Smith has developed a radical approach to training sprinters. Actually, let
me rephrase that: he’s developed a radical approach to how to think about training
sprinters, that just seems to work better than anything else out there.
You ask John Smith what the secret to sprinting is, and he’ll tell you. It’s about stripping
away complexity. About rationing energy. About not trying too hard. When the fastest
sprinters run their fastest times, John Smith will tell you, they come off the track
astonished at how easy it felt.
Obviously, there’s something about John Smith’s way of doing things that resonates for
me. But it serves my purpose this morning for a number of reasons. For one thing, it’s
timely: the Olympic Games start in Sydney tomorrow – tomorrow on this side of the date
line, anyway. But more to the point, John Smith’s story is all about bending perspective
on how the world works, and rewriting limits that are seemingly writ in stone. Finally,
[first sprinter photos go up]
it allows me to throw some cool graphics up on the wall here rather than the network
diagrams that I’m sure you’ll get your fill of before this conference is over.
Now, I wasn’t here last year. But I looked at last year’s agenda, and I had to smile when I
saw some of the session topics:
 Bandwidth: ruinous glut or key abundance?
 Now that we have all this bandwidth, what do we do with it?
You’ve got to admire a group who’s willing to take bandwidth for granted. And I know
George here is renowned for his claim that bandwidth is destined to become such a lowrent commodity that it will ultimately be free.
Free bandwidth – now, that’s the sort of statement that sells books. There isn’t a new
book to sell, is there, George?
But you see, I don’t have a book out. I’m a businessman…or at least an engineer in
businessman’s clothing. And I’ve got to tell you, the way I see it, you can’t get to that
promised land of “after the flood”…if it hasn’t rained yet.
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Of course, I’d like to think that’s one of the reasons I’m standing up here right now. The
infinite bandwidth future is exactly that: it’s the future. But if you want to get there from
here…well, I’ve got a few ideas.
Because, while you may eventually be giving bandwidth away like it’s AOL CDs, right
now – and for the foreseeable future – there’s still the small matter of how you provision
it, how you assure its reliability, and how you make a decent buck at it. We’re talking
hard-core business challenges here, folks. And those challenges don’t go away just
because we’re at a luxury resort in the Sierras and you have a micronized seaweed body
wrap scheduled for later today.
Simplification
Most people think of the 100-meter as a breakneck dash to the finish line. But John Smith
came at it from a 400-meter frame of reference, and the 400 meters is long enough to be
subdivided into phases. So he figured, if he could slice and dice the 100-meter into
sections – each piece with its own reason for being – he could develop discrete
approaches that might shave off a couple thousandths of a second at each stage.
The key here is the notion of reducing each phase of the race to its essence, its unique
kernel of potential. The key is simplifying the way the race is run.
And that, in essence, is the beauty of Ethernet: it simplifies the way networks are run.
And it can even do it on a piecemeal basis. You want to simplify LAN-WAN
connectivity at the POP? We’ve got a switch for that. You want to improve server-cache
performance in the data center? We can do that. You want to reduce the number of
interfaces you’re building into your networking hardware? Ethernet’s your man. Server
farms? Storage-area-networks? No problem.
And you know, Ethernet isn’t just about jacking up network speed. I know how George
feels about speed being an archaic measure – some icky, vestigial remnant of the
electronic world.
This isn’t even about capital and operating cost-containment being profoundly enhanced
by Ethernet’s simplicity – I don’t want to bore you with the obvious…although, I don’t
know, I’m never bored by it. I mean, don’t you just have to love it when some sort of
working-class, no-stock-options kind of technology – a regular Rodney Dangerfield
squeezed into a fat yellow cable – very methodically keeps knocking off some of the
most daunting challenges in the networking field?
Complexity? – check. Every time I hear someone go on about the infinite bandwidth
future, I just sort of smile inside: no, he ain’t from operations. You’ve got Rube Goldberg
building out the networks, and Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp trying to deal with the
results and taking it on the chin time and time again.
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Staffing? – check. What are the latest industry shortfall figures for programming talent? –
200,000? 300,000? Anyone here feeling the pinch? But how tough do you figure it is to
find people who know their way around Ethernet?
Scalability? – check. Ethernet scales likes something out of the X-Men. And you’ve got
10-gig just around the corner, 40-gig by 2005, 100-gig by 2009 – but I’m getting ahead of
myself.
Because the real magic of Ethernet, from a strategic business development point of view,
is in bandwidth provisioning and management. Picture this: a service provider gets an
email from a client who’s producing a major Webcast – something on the order of a
Victoria’s Secret runway show. They need 100meg more capacity – for that evening. The
technician shifts in his chair, takes another bite out of his burrito, makes a few clicks, and
in less time than it took to read the client’s email, the added bandwidth has been
provisioned.
No truck rolls. No ADM muxes. No translations to ATM or whatever other over-the-hill
technology you have to work around. Provisioning in minutes instead of weeks. Do you
realize how this can change a service provider’s business model? We’re talking total
reinvention. Your marketing department would have a field day. Who was it? Dominos
Pizza, a few years’ back?: delivery within 30 minutes or it’s free?…there you go, George;
there’s your free bandwidth. No lines, no waiting.
Bandwidth by the slice
Now I want you to get out your styluses and jot down the following four words –
bandwidth by the slice. I thought about having breakfast pizzas delivered. But the
logistics were ridiculous and, frankly, working with Ethernet these last few years, I’ve
gotten spoiled by how easy things should work.
Bandwidth-by-the-slice has its bandwidth-management benefits, of course. But it is a
marketing goldmine. Look, every company has its mission-critical applications that
absolutely can’t be jeopardized. But if they buy bandwidth off the rack, any cheesehead
downloading trailers during his lunch break for that new cheerleader movie can bog
down the system so that the really important data slows to a crawl.
With bandwidth-by-the-slice, however, customers can get a managed bandwidth package
tailored to meet specific business goals and service level objectives for top-priority
applications. So they know that their delay-sensitive traffic will never be disrupted or
dropped. They don’t pay for more than they need, but what they need is always there
when they need it.
So what do you think? Could you make some money selling bandwidth by the slice? Talk
about your customer-loyalty-building mechanism.
Then there’s usage-based billing. Come on, everyone wants to know what they’re paying
for and everyone wants to save money. These needs are as certain as death and taxes. But
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let’s say a service provider is rolling out a highly desirable premium service targeting
large corporate customers. His customers want it. They may be dying to use it. But
they’re also going to want to be sure that they only pay the premium price when they’re
using that service. Or if it’s a real breakthrough, customers may want access to the
service, but until it becomes an accepted business practice thoroughly embraced by their
people, they only want to pay when they use it.
With usage-based billing, not only do they pay only for what they use, but the service
provider gets his foot in the door to migrate them to new, high-margin service offerings
much more easily.
Reduced complexity. Lower costs. More cost-efficient management. Real-time
provisioning. Bandwidth by the slice. Usage-based billing. All those goodies, just from
simplifying the network by using Ethernet.
Reaction time
John Smith breaks down the 100-meter dash into five parts. His objective is to extend a
sprinter’s efforts through each of the first four phases, shifting gears as they max out the
power potential of each stage, so that they minimize the inevitable slowing down that
occurs towards the end.
Heh, inevitable slowing down – you find latency in the damnedest places, don’t you?
Smith’s first stage he calls “reaction time” – that moment after the gun fires when tightly
coiled bodies spring from the starting blocks with raw explosiveness. Smith’s insight into
the sprinter’s start is that it isn’t about thrust as much as it is about balance – about each
step being so perfectly placed that it sets the stage for optimizing the power of the next
step.
Ethernet Everywhere
When we first started Extreme Networks five years ago, Fast Ethernet was as far as
Ethernet had come. But you could see where it had come from. You could see where it
was going – and nothing defogs your visionary lenses better than having a nice
unobstructed view of a technology’s flight plan.
So our start differed from most other companies who imagined moving Ethernet out of
the LAN. From Day One, we’ve envisioned a pure Ethernet play. “Ethernet Everywhere”
has been our rallying cry.
Most people scoff at an Ethernet Everywhere scenario. Fine for a greenfield network,
they’ll say, but you’ll never get a traditional carrier to bite. Well, let me tell you
something: your traditional carriers are starting to get a little faint of heart in their
resistance. I talked to a long haul carrier several months ago. We were in his office,
discussing the potential impact of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and this is how he described his
situation to me:
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“I’ve got Ethernet at one end and Ethernet at the other end, and all this expensive stuff in
between.”
So as far as I’m concerned, the issue isn’t whether the big dogs will buy an EthernetEverywhere solution. I know they’re going to come to the table eventually. The trick is
how they’ll get there from here.
First off, they’re going to do it slowly. That’s just the way they do things. But hey, when
you’ve got a Metromedia Fiber, for instance, dropping the equivalent of, what? 83thousand fibers in the trench – and you’ve got wave division multiplexing – what’s the
big deal? Just light up a different fiber for voice. Take two. Take as many as you want. I
mean, if you can eliminate the cost of providing SONET muxes at every point as you
build out the network, wouldn’t you? And if you wouldn’t, I bet your shareholders would
like to know why.
Because let’s face it, voice is a fading player in the traffic pattern. Dataquest says data
made up about 50% of the traffic last year. And it’s just getting started: Insight Research
predicts that data will make up more than 90% of traffic within a few years.
Let me ask you, if voice makes up only 20% of the traffic on your network, why would
you let it dictate the way you manage that network? Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
And if you know that’s where things are headed, why wait until they get there before
doing something about it? It makes no sense to me.
But then, I’m an entrepreneur. I don’t have decades of investment to protect. And that’s
pretty much the key to the migration scenario. The new players putting in packetswitched IP networks couldn’t care less about SONET. They know that once an IP
network can demonstrate the same robustness as a circuit-switched network, SONET
becomes superfluous.
Oh, I know, a “robust IP network” is one of those oxymorons, like “jumbo shrimp.” But
you know it will come. Voice-over-IP won’t be an emerging technology forever. And
some IP-network entrepreneur is going to sit down one day and crunch the numbers and
say to himself “Man, I could sure turn a fire hose on my burn rate if I built my network
entirely on Ethernet switches.”
And the thing is, you’re already seeing it happening in the metro area networks. Let me
give you an example. In the Bay Area, where we’re located, you can get a T1 line for
about a thousand bucks a month. On the other hand, there’s a service provider in San
Francisco called Yipes, with its optical-fiber-based Ethernet network dropped into multitenant buildings, can give you a 100 Meg connection for three thousand a month max.
That’s seventy times the speed for only three times the money. Tell me something: if you
were responsible for marketing your converged network services, which option would
you want to be selling: T1s or a hundred meg? And how long do you think you’re going
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to last if you’re selling against an Ethernet-switched network with that kind of priceperformance?
Then you’re going to start to see SONET and ATM disappearing from the last mile…and
soon. I mean, just look around you. The CLEC’s are looking hard for an effective
business model with a technology solution for quicker provisioning at less cost. They’re
no fools. They know where their advantages lie. And I can tell you for a fact that they’re
going to find their solution in two weeks. Then they’re going to be using all their wiles to
entice the public to take a bite of their apple. The RBOCs may think of them as snakes,
but these alternative carriers are going to be throwing open the gates to a new-age Garden
of Eden, not keeping them locked up.
Then one day, you’re going to open your Gilder Technology Report, and George is going
to tell you about yet another company you’ve barely heard of. Except this company is
getting ready to roll out their coast-to-coast Ethernet-Everywhere network in the 3rd
quarter of 2003. And it will be “game over” for any major carriers that haven’t already
been following this migration path for themselves.
Drive phase
After that brief, but volatile moment of the sprinter’s start comes John Smith’s second
stage: the drive phase. The biggest mistake a sprinter can make as he comes out of the
blocks is to rise up too quickly to an upright position. The drive phase is all about
pushing forward with as low a profile as the sprinter can maintain, to reduce wind
resistance and focus the sprinter’s energy up the track.
For “Ethernet Everywhere,” the drive phase is in developing greenfield networks that act
almost like test beds for the future. Let me give you an example.
Hillsboro, Oregon is a small city of 65,000 people. Their communications network,
however, dated back to when they were a sleepy little farming town. But then Intel
happened, and the Silicon Forest happened, and the state-mandated 2020 Visioning
project happened. No matter how you looked at Hillsboro’s 10Mbps system, it simply
wasn’t making it.
In some ways, the 2020 Visioning project may have been the critical piece in their
decision to put in an Ethernet-switched MAN. Early in the 1990s, every community in
Oregon was given the challenge to envision what kind of community they wanted to be in
the year 2020 and create a 25-year action plan to lay the groundwork for realizing that
vision. Not the sort of mandate you typically see coming from the state capital, but then
Oregon’s like that.
Now, part of Hillsboro’s vision statement was that they wanted to be seen as a “model for
the use of new communication technologies.” An admirable objective, but sticky: it
meant they had to make changes now to meet their immediate needs as well as
proactively plan for the future they envisioned 25 to 30 years off. Let me see a show of
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hands: all those who have had a client come to them and say “I want a solution that will
dependably scale for the next 25 years,” raise ‘em high.
[hand over eyebrows, looks out into the audience]
Anyone?
If you go now and talk to Hillsboro’s network administrator, he’ll tell you they’ve got a
fiber network with Ethernet switches giving them wire-speed Layer 2 and Layer 3
switching, with link aggregation for enhanced reliability, and policy-based QoS software
and web-based management to protect mission-critical applications from traffic-induced
interference.
On the other hand, if you talk to Hillsboro’s chief information officer – how many towns
of 65,000 do you know that have their own CIO? – you hear their network described in
different terms.
He’ll talk about the videoconferencing they’re rolling out for the police department so
that the entire police force, in the central office and three branch offices, can take part in
real-time briefings most expediently.
He’ll tell you about the critical importance of the schools in a technology-driven
community and how their emphasis on school-to-work programs demands that they wire
the schools – not just so that kids can use educational software and access the Internet –
but to create high-speed links between schools and businesses to promote the synergies
that so often go undiscovered in school-to-work programs.
Virtually every facet of community life will be affected, even those with the least likely
connections to a broadband network.
 They want to upgrade child-care opportunities? They can now provide video
monitoring options for parents who want to look in on their kids from the office.
 They want to enhance their recycling program? They can create recycling education
videos to be broadcast online to the schools, and downloadable for home use.
 They want to augment their regional mass transit service with a Hillsboro-centric
service? They can introduce jitney buses wired for real-time on-demand scheduling.
The convention center, the multi-language network, the community information systems,
the public online kiosks – however Hillsboro wants to improve the quality of life and the
productivity of business in their town is now do-able, in ways they could never have even
envisioned during their visioning exercise.
In the next stage, Hillsboro’s going to deploy long-range optics that will let them build
out their network to encompass the more remote areas on the outskirts of town – which,
coincidentally, will also allow them to provide traffic-handling for public agencies
throughout Washington County.
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So not only does Hillsboro save money by eliminating their old T1 lines, not only do they
improve the productivity of their businesses, the efficiency of their city government –
now there’s a concept you don’t come across too often – and the quality of life of their
citizens, not only do they enhance their appeal for attracting new business development.
But now they’ve added the benefits of a new revenue stream to the mix: outsource
supplier of communication services to other government agencies.
In other words, Hillsboro’s already a model for the use of new communication
technologies…20 years ahead of their schedule.
Transition
In John Smith’s third section, the transitional stage, the sprinter comes fully out of the
drive-phase crouch and ratchets up to full velocity. Third gear. Fourth gear. Fifth gear –
all in a matter of little more than three seconds. Things change fast in the early stages of
the 100 meter.
Here’s how things are going to change in my world – and yours. In the next year…no, in
the next six months, you’re going to see the following Ethernet-driven developments:
 10 Gigabit Ethernet being deployed in trials, making people here take the Lord’s
name in vain because it’s delivering OC-192 levels of performance in MANs for less
cost than a half-bath renovation in a Palo Alto bungalow.
 Ethernet frames being delivered to the office by Gigabit Ethernet MANs, and to the
home by either DSL or cable. And not just in the U.S.
 Digital TV over Ethernet into the home, making it the next “new, new thing” or
“killer app” or whatever hyperbole comes quickest to your mind. Of course, you’ll
still only be able to get The Tonight Show – and who really wants to get that detailed
a look at Jay Leno’s chin? But that Pandora’s box will be flung wide and truly open.
And believe me, these are not bold predictions – I’m saving those for the cocktail
reception this evening. But virtually everything’s in place for all these others to happen
today.
Maximum velocity
At the heart of John Smith’s 100 meters, the sprinter attains maximum velocity. His legs
are gulping down eight feet of lane with every step, each step taking mere hundredths of
a second. I’ll save you doing the math: it comes out to roughly forty miles an hour. If it
were possible to run the entire 100 meters at maximum velocity, the sprinter would finish
in under six seconds – correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that would be a new world
record.
Most spectators think the maximum-velocity stage is where the race is won or lost, but
they’d be wrong. For even world-class sprinters are hard-pressed to maintain maximum
velocity for much more than 30 or 40 meters before they start to tail off.
No, the race is won by maxing out each phase, by shaving those miniscule fractions of a
second off at each stage…and by psyching out your prime rival as you get settled in the
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blocks, and ripping out the fragile core of his confidence with a few strategically placed
barbs.
So, in the spirit of maximum velocity, I’d like to pose a couple of interrelated questions
to the conferees:
 what is your timeframe for achieving infinite broadband?
 and what are your strategies for compressing that timeframe at each stage?
Oh, and one other question, lest you think we’re only capable of thinking in terms of the
logistical and analytic:
 Will infinite broadband be enough?
Frankly, I think that last question is by far the more interesting. Remember what I said
about John Smith at the very beginning: his radical approach wasn’t just about how to
train sprinters, but how to think about training sprinters.
I believe we are continually in danger of reducing our thinking about broadband to purely
quantitative terms.
Let me ask you: you remember what it was like when you first got broadband service –
even just the T1 at your office? At first, there was the novelty of always-on. You’d check
your company’s stock quote every 10 minutes…just because you could. You didn’t do
much more than what you used to do on dial-up service. You just did it faster.
But then you started using the Web differently, didn’t you? You wouldn’t dream of
putting your personal organizer on the Web when you had dial-up service. But with
broadband, you can enter a new appointment on a Web-based organizer before you could
even get the stylus out of your Palm Pilot. You couldn’t imagine listening to music over
the Web when you had dial-up, with its AM-radio-in-a-thunderstorm sound – other than
to be able to say that you did. But with broadband, you’re burning CDs like you’re Tower
Records on a sugar rush.
Broadband entirely changes the way you think about how the world works – and how you
live in that world. Broadband isn’t merely a “thing” – it’s a new way of thinking. And
new ways of thinking tend to unleash disruptive technologies, not to mention
discontinuities in demand.
Oh right, demand. People, if you want to really come to grips with the bandwidth
challenges that we face – in the near-future alone – you have to shake off your old
preconceptions about the nature of demand and where it’s going to come from. Even the
ones that may only be as old as last night’s download from your industry analysts’ Web
site. Mark my words: by 2010, home computers – or, more accurately, Internet-access
devices – will exceed 90% penetration in the American home.
And their users will be demanding the broadband networks to support them. Because, for
our kids, the Internet won’t be something they do – it will be a part of who they are.
Bandwidth is their birthright. Forrester Research, last year, did a study of 10,000
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teenagers and young adults – I don’t know the exact demographics. But do you know
who the number-two-ranked brand was, worldwide, second to only Coca Cola?
Yahoo.
I don’t know about you, but that sends a chill up my spine…but a very nice chill.
Because this is what all these trends and convergences and techno-developments mean to
me.
It means Ethernet RULES! Look at what the SONET networks are faced with. They’ve
got their fiber layer, then their SONET layer, then their packet-over-SONET layer, then
their ATM switching and IP routing layers, then their Ethernet layer. Their network
schematic looks worse than an air traffic control screen at O’Hare Airport…on a good
day.
You’ve got to decouple data from the transport layer. And that’s what Ethernet does.
Even if you run it over SONET – which, I admit, is the near-term likelihood for the big
players if they want a fighting chance at staying big in the long-term – Ethernet simplifies
the network. But run an Ethernet-Everywhere network directly over the fiber and you
collapse four layers into one. Then what you’ve got is the flat-hierarchy architecture for
the all-optical network. And haven’t I been reading for the last ten years in all those
progressive business books that flat hierarchies are a desired end-state? – more
streamlined, more efficient, more responsive? I can’t be the only one who sees the
goodness parallels here.
Now, some of you out there, I’m sure, are just itching to throw your hand in the air and
ask oh-so-innocently: “Excuse me, but aren’t you forgetting something? Like, how is this
neat and clean, single-layer network going to manage itself?”
The answer is very simple: leave…the management…to IP.
You know, one of the things that has always fascinated me about technology
development is how every new technology seems to yearn to be an empire builder. You
remember how, in the early days of the PC, every software program insisted on being
installed in the autoexec.bat? And how last year, every Web site wanted to be your
portal? Everyone thinks the universe should revolve around them.
It’s no different with network infrastructure technology: every new technology that came
down the pike had its own management structure – FDDI had embedded SMT, ATM had
embedded QoS, SONET has its own ring-healing and rerouting protocols. Well, it’s time
to downsize, and cut out the fat in the management level.
So I’m here to tell you that IP layer routing protocols, running on frame levels of
Ethernet, are going to be fundamental to the infinite bandwidth future.
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Now, you may scoff that IP can’t even manage itself, much less the complete voice –
data – video network. And there is certainly some substance to rest those doubts on…at
the moment. But think about how far IP has come in such a short time. Then, think about
how far Ethernet has come in its 20-odd years – not only in the three orders of magnitude
of increased speed, but in a second level of innovation…Ethernet hub, switching, Layer 3
switches, QoS, bandwidth provisioning. I mean, let’s be serious here, folks: Ethernet and
IP evolve new technologies faster than the POTS dealers submit rate-increase requests.
There is absolutely no question that IP will develop elegant, comprehensive and
supremely effective management protocols for the Ethernet-Everywhere, all-optical
network. The only issue is whether you’re going to fight it or foster it.
The wildcatters among you, of course, are just sitting out there in the back of the
classroom, laughing into your comic books. You figure there is no bandwidth demand so
big that you can’t throw a bazillion wavelengths at it through that big wad of fiber you’ve
laid. But, hey, you still need a mechanism for getting the data onto all those wavelengths.
You can’t just wave your fiber at it.
So I’m putting all my money on Ethernet. Because this is the other thing that’s happening
with Ethernet: it’s getting faster all the time. I alluded to it earlier: 10 gig is knocking at
the door, 40 gig will be in the stores by 2005, and 100 gig will roll out by 2009. 100 gig –
that’s a lot of carrying capacity.
Darwin Awards
Yes, I know you can do a reasonable facsimile of 100-gig carrying capacity right now,
using DWDM and running a hundred streams or more down each fiber. But that approach
reminds me of a story I heard a while back. You all know about the Darwin Awards,
right? -- that annual contest that names the person whose stupidity was so colossal that
his death made the greatest contribution to the world’s collective gene pool that year by
removing his genes from it.
The winner I’m thinking of was the fellow who, in search of bragging speed, strapped a
jet engine onto the back of his Chevy Camaro or whatever – it’s been a few years, so I
can’t remember all the details. But he went out to some flat stretch of road over a flat
stretch of countryside, got up a good head of steam, and then flipped on the afterburners.
What came next was largely speculation, because no one was there to witness it. But
looking at his skid marks – and the distance he traveled before embedding himself in a
mountainside several miles down the road – observers after-the-fact figured that his car
went airborne in a matter of seconds. He was turned, literally, into a missile. The
description of his remains was quite entertainingly lurid.
Obviously, I’m not looking for an exact analogy here, but I’m sure you get my drift.
Speed without control is useless. Ethernet-Everywhere networks will give you not only
infinite bandwidth, but easily manageable infinite bandwidth.
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And that’s what’s going to happen. When I say to you that Ethernet is a virtually
inexorable force, I’m not offering any brazen, out-on-a-limb speculation that will set this
conference abuzz. I’m just telling it like it is.
In fact, it’s sort of ironic. I mentioned a few minutes ago that new ways of thinking tend
to unleash disruptive technologies. And if you froze this moment in time in the WAN
environment, Ethernet would look like one of those disruptive technologies. In truth,
disruption was a part of our culture when we started Extreme Networks a few years ago. I
mean, just look at our name.
But Ethernet is being mainstreamed. It will ultimately become the establishment. Then
what do I do? Rename the company?
Holding On
John Smith calls his last stage “holding on.” In the last 20 meters, muscle fibers are
tearing, lactic acid is building to flood stage, lungs are searing, the body is breaking down
like a jet plane exceeding tolerances in a steep dive. The human body is simply not meant
to run this fast.
Every runner slows in the last 20 meters. The race often goes to the runner who slows the
least.
Sprinters, like most athletes, set goals for themselves at the beginning of the season.
Every now and again, you’ll hear a story about a sprinter who wrote down his best-time
objective for the season and, after he’s shattered the world record for his event, it turns
out that his goal was indeed, not just to break the world record, but to obliterate it.
In business, we call these “stretch objectives.” Infinite bandwidth is a great stretch
objective. But until it happens, probably in some paradigm-rattling burst of techno-glory,
the question at the top of everyone’s list will continue to be “How do you get there from
here?” What do you have to do to achieve it? What are the enabling technologies and
how do they fit in the greater scheme of things?
That last one is the question I’m in the business of answering. Because when all is said
and done, ladies and gentlemen, Ethernet’s the only emperor who’s actually wearing
clothes at the moment.
John Smith’s final anecdote in that article was about Carl Lewis’s response in 1994, after
LeRoy Burrell absolutely blew his doors off to break Lewis’ world record in the 100
meters. Carl was fine with it. Did all the interviews. It was just one race – no big deal. He
lost the race and he was still able to steal Burrell’s thunder.
“Mind games,” Smith said to the magazine reporter. “Man, they’re just beautiful.”
This is my first time at Telecosm. But near as I can tell, this is one of the more impressive
collections of technology minds to be gathered in one place at one time. And you
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represent just about every position on the playing field. People here have a lot at stake.
Just as John Smith’s protégés have a lot on the line in Sydney. But we’ll know in just
another week or so if one of them will be going home with the gold. It will take
considerably more time before we learn who the big winners are in the Ethernet
Everywhere revolution.
But, I’ve had my say. So now, let the games begin. Thank-you.
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