Pradeep Sindhu是Juniper Networks公司（游戏邦注：它是一家专业的IP通信设备公司，市值达230亿美元）联合创始人及董事长，他在最近的媒体采访中表示，iPhone对整个移动领域的推动作用，堪比浏览器为网络世界所带来的影响。同时还并指出iPhone和Android智能手机改变了一切，并针对互联网基础设施以及下一代网络的未来发展趋势发表了自己的看法。

Juniper_Networks_logo

除非网络运行速度降低，否则多数移动内容、手机应用开发者都不会去关心网络本身的结构。事实上，我们应该关注所有基础性的网络技术，因为这样有助于我们思考这些前端服务的发展空间。

Sindhu称今天的“网络”是一种极强大的技术，而不是一批超级快速、疯狂攫取能量的微处理器的合体。随着网络运行性能的加强，所有与其相连接的事物的运行性能也随之上升，创建于手机平台之上的应用程序也不例外。

应用程序成就运行平台

据他所述，正是IBM 360、个人电脑和网页浏览器之所以能成长为庞然大物，得益于这些平台应用程序的不断发展，“当一个平台变得很大众很普通时，它的地位就不会再像其应用程序那样重要。”个人电脑催生出了微软、Intuit和Adobe等软件公司，浏览器的崛起成就了谷歌、亚马逊、eBay、雅虎和Facebook等身价达数十亿美元的公司。

iOS和Android移动设备是新型平台，支持用户随时随地访问应用程序，获取相应内容或体验。这种全新的网络使用习惯，将给网络基础设施的需求量，以及网络流量的走向带来深远的影响。

Sindhu指出，移动设备平台的发展速度越来越快，应用程序可以为这些平台塑造积极的反馈循环——应用程序的数量越多，用户对这些平台的依赖和需求量也就越大。在这个过程中，移动网络也在发生变化，它放大了这种反馈循环的影响。

云+移动性=新型信息基础设施

Sindhu相信移动性（游戏邦注：有人将其称之为“随时随地的计算处理功能”）将改变整个信息基础设施的概念，因为我们多数人都希望“随时随地、自由地跨平台消费信息及其相关服务”。

但实现这一点的前提是要有基于云的计算服务，“你需要一个可存储，尤其是长期持续地将信息完全集中存储到一个大型数据中心的框架”，这就会涉及基于云的大量计算处理工作。也许这也正是我们应该看到庞大的计算处理、移动性、云服务的两面性的原因所在。

在这个新环境中，你需要拥有足够的本地内存，但能够从云中获取任何东西，并且屏幕像素极高的移动设备。Sindhu认为未来的云客户端既非瘦客户端也非肥客户端，它是“健康客户端”。因为在不远的未来，移动互联网的运行性能仍会充满变数，只有这种健康客户端才能满足人们的需求，“即使网络运行性能不稳定，你也还是会希望自己的设备拥有卓越的运行性能。”

网络所面临的压力

这同时也意味着将信息转移到任何一处的计算工作将为整个网络增加大量的经济压力，但Sindhu称我们不应该再将存储网络视为一个声音网络、音频网络、广播电视网络、企业网络，而应把它看成一个单独的整体。

“存储网络实际上损害了自身的价值，因为一个网络只有完全连接到其他网络时，才能实现最大化的价值”，这就像是云计算和移动时代的麦特卡夫定律。Sindhu认为人们不该再用箱子、线路、管道这类词汇来形容网络，而应将网络视为一个拥有生命力，会呼吸的平台，并在其基础上创建框架。

不过Sindhu拒绝具体说明互联网未来的流量变化模式，因为他认为现在的我们其实低估了人们在网络使用方式上的创意性，仅对此提出了他的三个预测：

·全球的宽带需求只会有增无减

·网络流量一直就是难以捉摸的事物

·网络流量将更为动态

他表示我们不可过于强调有线与无线网络的区别，因为未来任何客户端设备、应用程序都会对网络有所需求，所以网络流量的变化将更难以预测。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

How iPhone and Android Are Changing the Network

If you want to run into Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder of Juniper Networks, your best bet is one of Palo Alto’s many cafes. Chances are, if you spot Sindhu, chairman of a $23 billion (in market capitalization) company, he is likely pondering about the future of the infrastructure of the Internet and the next-generation of networks.

A few days back, I caught up with him, hoping to understand how the Internet is going to evolve especially as we have entered the age of anywhere computing. “The iPhone is doing to the mobile world, what the browser did to the wireline world,” Sindhu told me. The iPhone and Android-based smartphones are changing everything, including how his company thinks about network infrastructure and how it will refine the network architecture in the future.
Why Should You Care?

Many who are developing apps and services for mobile devices don’t pay much attention to the innards of the networks themselves, barring moments when our network behaves like me running up a hill. We should be paying attention to all the underlying networking technologies, mostly because it helps us think about what these front-end services can do.

Sindhu explains that today the “networks” are the enabling technology, instead of super fast, energy hogging microprocessors. As the performance of the network increases, so does the performance of everything connected to that network, and by extension, the apps built on those device platform.

The Apps Make The Platform

“When the platform becomes general enough, it doesn’t matter as much as the apps built on top of that platform.” Sindhu pointed to IBM 360, the PC and the web-browser as platforms that became gigantic because of apps built on those platforms. The PC spawned app companies like Microsoft, Intuit and Adobe. The rise of the browser as a platform helped spawn apps such as Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and Facebook, all worth many billions of dollars.

The iOS and Android-based Internet connected mobile devices are the new platform, Sindhu argues, except, they are with us all the time, allowing us to use apps built on top of these platforms, anytime, anywhere and as much as we want. This is a brand new type of usage behavior that is going to have a profound impact on the demands put on network infrastructure, and how the traffic flows across the network.

Sindhu points out that the establishment of platforms is becoming faster and faster. Apps, he argues, form the positive feedback loop for a platform – the more applications, the more demand for the platform. What has changed is the network (aka the Internet) which acts as amplification for the feedback loop.
Cloud + Mobility = New Information Infrastructure

Sindhu believes (and many agree) that the rise of mobility, which I like to describe as “anywhere computing,” is going to change the whole notion of information infrastructure. Most of us want “to consume information and information services anytime, anywhere, with no limitations, and preferably in the same way across all devices,” he points out.

In order for this to happen, you need “cloud” based computing. “You need an architecture where storage, especially long-term, persistent storage, needs to be absolutely centralized, logically centralized, in large-scale data centers,” Sindhu argues. And it goes for heavy computing, which needs to be in the cloud as well. Perhaps that is why in this new world of eyeball-oriented computing, mobility and cloud, should be viewed as two sides of the same coin.

For this new environment, you need devices that have just enough local storage but can tap into the cloud for everything else and are graphics intensive. The cloud clients of tomorrow are not thin clients or fat clients, Sindhu says. Instead they are all “fit clients.” And you need fit clients because for the near foreseeable future, the network performance is going to remain quite variable. “You want the device to operate well, even if the network has variable performance,” Sindhu argued.

The Network Under Pressure

It also means that the fundamental shift to anywhere computing will increase the economic pressures on the network. He argues that it is time to stop thinking in terms of silo networks–a network for voice, a network for radio, a network for broadcast television, an enterprise network–and instead think it terms of a single network.

“The silo networks actually destroy value because the value for a network is maximized when it’s a fully connected, any-to-any network. In other words, anyone can reach anyone else,” says Sindhu. It’s like Metcalfe’s Law for the cloud computing and mobile age. Sindhu argues that it is time to stop thinking in terms of boxes, wires and pipes. Instead, we need to start treating the network as a living, breathing platform and build infrastructure for it.

When I asked Sindhu to predict the traffic patterns of the Internet, he declined to be specific because he thinks that we tend to underestimate how creative people find ways to leverage the network. Instead he offered three observations:

* The bandwidth requirements globally are only going to accelerate.

* The traffic is going to get a lot more stochastic in nature.

* The traffic is going to become more dynamic.

Sindhu argues that we shouldn’t distinguish between a wired or a wireless network, for in the future the network traffic is going to be more unpredictable, with demand coming from any client device, from any app at anytime.（source:gigaom）