Sarah Sorensen - The Sustainable Network: The Accidental Answer for a Troubled Planet

The Sustainable Network

Sarah Sorensen

Beijing Cambridge Farnham Kln Sebastopol Tokyo

Dedication

The images in the chapter openers of this book are stills taken from the video blogs at Rocketboom.com, a New York City-based daily international news program that covers a wide range of information and commentary from top news stories to contemporary Internet culture. The author gratefully acknowledges Rocketboom.com for its assistance and generous permission to use these images to help wryly illustrate what some might consider a dry subject.

Thank you. Keep up your unique perspective on us!

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Preface

(the authors father)

Real life is often more fantastic than fiction if you just take the time to live it.

Thomas Harrison

I wrote The Sustainable Network late in the evenings. My husband and I would put our two girls to bed and then he would settle into whatever he was doing and I would sit down and try to write. I would start by thinking of the events and news of the day. It seemed the world was spoon-feeding me more and more examples of how the network has infiltrated our lives, our society, our culture. I cant tell you how many days I would read the morning headlines and find direct ties to what I was intending to write that evening. They were like signposts telling me that I was on the right track, that I wasnt just theorizing the sustainable network, but rather documenting its existence.

And as I went through the various stages of editing and production that OReilly and its staff handled so expertly, I struggled with wanting to update this books pages daily with all that had happened in the world. Yikes, I would say while reading some news story, this is perfect for Chapter x . Right up to press time, Im afraid I continued to badger the editors to include just one more little update. Please. Pretty please. North Korea just launched a cyberattack against websites in Seoul....

The network is a dynamic entity, as dynamic as the world itself, and ultimately I had to back off my desires for this book to represent that dynamic-ism in its most up-to-date incarnation. Ultimately I had to admit to myself that this book would be outdated the day it arrived. But that fact simply goes to prove that the sustainable network isnt just a vision, its a reality. Every day there are examples of how all the various connections created, enabled, and supported by the network are sustaining new developments and opportunities.

So I hope that when reading this book, you too will start to recognize this network that is all around you, and maybe, by somewhere in the middle of the book, you will start to see its influence on the world and begin to understand your personal relationship with it. The network is in every political, economic, and social script that plays out on a local, regional, and international stage. Its in the way you live your life and do your job. And once its called out and recognized for the role it playsas a powerful tool that can be used to sustain changetheres a chance we can better address some of the tougher problems facing our planet today. At least thats my hope.

If this book can help open your eyes a little to the networking industry and this connective tissue called the network (sometimes boiled down to the Internet, but which is by no means indicative of all it entails), then I will have accomplished what I set out to do. Sure, the network is made of cables, routers, acronyms, and geeky things you may never care to know too much about, but it is important that you know enough to be able to understand its significance and then help shape the role it plays in our lives. Thats why its in the news every single day and terms like broadband, 3G, tweets, and smart grids are a part of our everyday vernacular.

In this book, I attempt to lay out the context and provide some background on the network that is rapidly changing the world. Only through greater understanding of this thing that connects us all in ways we never thought possible and helps us tackle problems we previously thought unsolvable does it have a chance to really make a difference.

Many, many people have come before me, and many more will follow. But over the course of the past two years, some stopped to help me craft this book, and I am indebted to them all.

To start, I would like to thank Nir Zuk, a technology visionary who patiently explained the inner workings of the network to me, a nonengineer, and continued to listen and advise as I wrestled with the content of this book. I am also indebted to many others for their time and explanations over the years, particularly Kowsik Guruswamy, Ajit Sancheti, Jens Schmidt, Bryan Burns, Avishai Avivi, Rakesh Loonkar, Lee Klarich, Akhlaq Ahmed Ali, Kent Watson, Chris Cantrell, Eric Moret, Moshe Shaham, Glen Gibson, Arnit Green, and Mike Kouri, who helped me make sense of the weeds. I would also like to thank Jonathan Zdziarski, Ted Ritter, and Chris Zimmerman, who took the time to read and provide insights into chapters of my book. I have also been fortunate to have great mentors in my career and would like to thank Robert Ma, Toby Zwikel, and Michael Hakkert for being such solid sounding boards on which I could always depend.

I am also thankful for the support of everyone in the Juniper Networks community. I appreciate the time offered by Leonid Burakovsky, Spencer Greene, Luc Ceuppens, Greg Friedmann, and Brad Minnis to read sections, and I am grateful to everyone who took an interest. Thank you Oliver Tavakoli, Mark Bauhaus, Andrew Coward, Dina Milazzo, Mike Banic, Manoj Leelanivas, Susan Ursch, Ronit Polak, Dorie Ravara, Susan Stover, Susan Lane, Gina Ahern, Michele Felder, Michelle Bhatia, Alan Sardella, Carolyn Rohrer, Penny Still, Trevor Dearing, Beth Gage, Michael Kluwin, Kristal Ferchau, David Asplund, Craig Strachman, Dean Hickman-Smith, Anya Harris, Nikhil Shah, and so many others. No matter how small or quick, your words of encouragement were like lifelines to me during this long journey.

Of course, the people at OReilly, who have held my hands through this process as a first-time author, have been invaluable. I am extremely appreciative of Mike Loukidess guidance and the support of Betsy Waliszewski and Sarah Kim, not to mention my copyeditor, Amy Thomson. I also want to extend a thank you to Nancy Koerbel for the careful reading and suggestions.

Then there is Patrick Ames, my editor. I am not sure I can ever thank him enough for all he has done for me and for this book. Without him, there would be no book. Thank you, Patrick, for believing in me and my ideas. Thank you for keeping me on track and being understanding of my quirks (no outlines). Thank you for your countless hoursI know you were up late at night right along with meand the dedication you had to see this through. I am forever grateful.