One of the biggest innovations of the Internet was moving the intelligence from the network to the edge devices. Making the end host responsible for data delivery and creating a network architecture that is application agnostic were radical and incredibly successful ideas. Although much of the architecture made this switch the demarcation between the network owner and its users forced some features such as access control and provisioning to remain in the access routers and switches. Given the relationship of consumers to their service providers this will probably never change in the consumer Internet market but something very interesting is happening within data centres due to virtualization.

Moving to the Edge: An ACM CTO Roundtable on Network Virtualization

One of the most interesting ideas in the discussion linked to above is that the advent of system virtualization necessarily moves the point of enforcement, or intelligence, from the network access layer into the host itself. This comes in the form of the networking features of hypervisors. Hypervisors implement switching and routing but what’s really interesting is that they are also the best location for functions such as firewalls because implementing these functions as separate devices greatly limits the flexibility of the virtualized data centre. Imagine migrating a VM anywhere the data center and having its firewall rules follow automatically to the new host vs having to choose amongst N hosts which are behind the same firewall.

Two groups may be affected greatly by this change: network equipment vendors and IT networking professionals.

I do not believe that owners of existing network infrastructure need to worry about the hardware they already have in place. Chances are your existing network infrastructure provides adequate bandwidth. Longer term, networking functions are being pulled into software, and you can probably keep your infrastructure. The reason you buy hardware the next time will be because you need more bandwidth or less latency. It will not be because you need some virtualization function. (Martin Casado)

The above argues that existing network switches and routers are already good enough for this new architecture. That is, networking equipment will become further commoditized which may not be good from the perspective of Cisco and other equipment vendors.

What about switch and router experts?

The people who will be left out in the cold are the folks in IT who have built their careers tuning switches. As the edge moves into the server where enforcement is significantly improved, there will be new interfaces that we’ve not yet seen. It will not be a world of discover, learn, and snoop; it will be a world of know and cause. (Lin Nease)

and

There’s a contention over who’s providing the network edge inside the server. It’s clearly going inside the server and is forever gone from a dedicated network device. A server-based architecture will eventually emerge providing network-management edge control that will have an API for edge functionality, as well as an enforcement point. The only question in my mind is what will shake out with NICs, I/O virtualization, virtual bridges, etc. Soft switches are here to stay, and I believe the whole NIC thing is going to be an option in which only a few will partake. The services provided by software are what is of value here, and Moore’s law has cheapened CPU cycles enough to make it worthwhile to burn switching cycles inside the server.

If I’m a network guy in IT, I better much more intensely learn the concept of port groups, how VMware, Xen, etc. work, and then figure out how to get control of the password and get on the edge. Those folks now have options that they have never had before.

The guys managing the servers are not qualified to lead on this because they don’t understand the concept of a single shared network. They think in terms of bandwidth and VPLS (virtual private LAN service) instead of thinking about the network as one system that everybody shares and is way oversubscribed. (Lin Nease)

Of course networking experts will still be required but this new world may involve spending a lot more time managing servers than at the router/switch CLI.

The simple network continues to win.