Bippity Boppity Boom! The Impact of Enchanted Objects on Development, Infrastructure and the Cloud

I have been spending a bunch of my time recently thinking through the impact on what David Rose of Ditto Labs and MIT Media Lab romantically calls ‘Enchanted Objects’.  What are enchanted objects?   Enchanted Objects are devices, appliances, tools, dishware, anything that is ultimately connected to the Internet (or any connected network) and become to some degree aware of the world around them.   Imagine an Umbrella that has a light on its hilt that lights up if it may rain today, reminding you that you might want to bring it along on your travels.   Imagine your pantry and refrigerator communicating with your grocery cart at the store while you shop, letting you know the things you are running low on or even bypasses the part where you have to shop, and automatically just orders it to your home.  This approach is going to fundamentally change everything you know in life from credit cards to having a barbeque with friends. These things and their capabilities are going to change our world in ways that we cannot even fathom today.   Our Technology Industry calls this emerging field, the Internet of Things.   Ugh!  How absolutely boring. Our industry has this way of sucking all the fun out of things don’t we?   I personally feel that ‘Enchanted Objects’ is a far more compelling classification, as it speaks to the possibilities, wonderment and possibly terror that lies in store for us.  If we must make it sound ‘technical’ maybe we can call it the Enchantosphere.

While I may someday do a post about all of the interesting things I have found out there already, or the ideas that I have come up with for this new enchanted world,  I wanted to to reflect a bit on what it means for the things that I normally write about.  You know, things like The cloud, big infrastructure, and scaled software development.   So go grab your walking staff of traffic conditions and come on an interesting journey into the not-so-distant world of Cloud powered magic…

The first thing you need to understand is, if you work in this industry, you are not an idle player in this magical realm.  You are, for lack of a better term, a wizard or an enchanter.   Your role will be pivotal in creating magic items, maintaining the magic around us, or ensuring that the magic used by everyone stays strong. While the Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy book references are almost limitless for this conversation I am going to try and bring it back to the world we know today.  I promise.  I am really just trying to tease out a glimpse of the world to come and the importance of the cloud, data center infrastructure, and the significant impacts on software development and how software based services may have to evolve. 

The Magical Weaves Surround Us

Every device and enchanted item will be connected.  Whether via through WIFI in your work and home, over mobile networks, or all of the above and more, these Enchanted Objects will be connected to the magical weaves all around us.  If you happen to be a network engineer you know that I am talking to you.  All of these objects are going to have to connect to something.   If you are one of those folks who are stuck in IPv4, you better upgrade yourself. There just isn’t enough address space there to connect everything in our magical world of the future.  IPv6 will be a must. In fact, these devices could just be that ‘killer app’ that drives global adoption of the standard even faster.   But its not just about address space, these kind of connected objects are going to open up and challenge whole new areas in security, spectrum management, routing, and a host of other areas.   I am personally thinking through some very interesting source-based routing applications in the Enchantosphere as well.   The short of it is, this new magical world is going to stress the limits of how things are connected today and Network Engineers will be charged with keeping our magical weaves flowing to allow our charmed existences to continue.  You are the Keepers of the Magical Weave and I am not talking about a tricked out hairpiece either.

While just briefly mentioned above – Security Engineers are going to have to evolve significantly as well.   It will lead into whole new areas and fields of privacy protection hard to even conceive at this point.  Even things like Health and Safety will need to be considered.  Imagine a stove that starts pre-heating itself based on where you are on your commute home and the dinner menu you have planned.  While some of those controls will need to be programmed into the software itself, there is no doubt that those capabilities will need to be well guarded.  Why, I can almost see the Wards and Glyphs of Protection you will have to create.

The Wizard’s Tower

As cool as all these enchanted objects could be, they would all be worthless IP-enabled husks without the advent of the construct that we now call The Cloud.  When I talk about ‘The Cloud’ I am talking about more than just virtualized server instances and marketing-laden terminology.  I am talking about Data Centers.  I am talking about automation.  I am talking about ubiquitous compute capabilities all around the world.  The actual physical places where the magical services live! The Data Centers which include the technologies of both IT and facilities infrastructure and automation, The proverbial Wizards Tower!  This is where our enchanted objects will come to discover who they, how they work, what they should do, and retrieve any new capabilities they may yet magically receive.  This new world is going to drive the need for more compute centers across the globe.  This growth will not just be driven by demand, although the demand will admittedly be huge, but by other more mundane ‘muggle’ matters such as regulatory requirements, privacy enforcement, taxation and revenue.  I bet you were figuring  that with all this new found magical power flying around we would be able to finally rid ourselves of lawyers, legislators, government hacks, and the like.   Alas, it is after all still the real world.  Cloud Computing capacity will continue to grow, the demand for services increasing, and the development of an entire eco-system of software and services that sit atop the various cloud providers will be birthed.

I don’t know if many of you have read Robert Jordan’s fantasy series called ‘The Wheel of Time’, but in that series he has a a classification of enchanted objects called the Terangreal.  These are single purpose or limited power artifacts that anyone can use.   Like my example of the umbrella that lights up if its going to rain after it checks with Weatherbug for weather conditions in your area, or a ring that lights up to let you know that there is a new Loosebolts post available to read, or a garden gnome whose hat lights up when it detects evidence of plant eating bugs in your garden.  These are devices that require no technical knowledge to use, configure, but give some value to its owner.   They do their function and that is it.   By the way, I am an engineer not a marketing guy, if you don’t like my examples of special purpose enchanted objects you can tweet me better ones at @mjmanos. 

These devices will reach out, download their software, learn their capabilities, and just work as advertised.   Software in this model may seem very similar to todays software development techniques and environments but I believe we will begin to see fundamental changes in how software works and is distributed.   Software will be portable. Services will be portable.   Allowing for truly amazing “Multi-purpose” enchanted objects.  The ability to download “apps” to these objects can become common place.   Even something as a common place as a credit card could evolve to a piece of software or code that could be transported around in various devices.  Simply wave that RFID enabled stick (ok, wand) that contains your credit card app at the register and as long as you are wearing your necklace which stores your digital ID the transaction goes through.  Two factor authentication in the real world.  Or instead of a wand, maybe its just your wallet.  When thinking about this app enabled platform it gives a whole new meaning to the Capital One catchphrase Whats in your wallet?  The bottom line here is that a whole host of software, services, and other capabilities will become incredibly portable, and allow for some very interesting enchanted objects indeed.

The bottom line here is that we are just beginning to see into a new world of the Internet of Things… of Enchanted Objects.   The simpler things become the more complex they truly are.   Those of us who deal with large scale infrastructure, software and service development, and cloud based technologies have a heck of a ride ahead of us.  We are the keepers of the complex, Masters of the Arcane, and needers of a good bath.

\Mm

Google Purchase of Deep Earth Mining Equipment in Support of ‘Project Rabbit Ears’ and Worldwide WIFI availability…

(10/31/2013 – Mountain View, California) – Close examination of Google’s data center construction related purchases has revealed the procurement of large scale deep earth mining equipment.   While the actual need for the deep mining gear is unclear, many speculate that it has to do with a secretive internal project that has come to light known only as Project: Rabbit Ears. 

According to sources not at all familiar with Google technology infrastructure strategy, Project Rabbit ears is the natural outgrowth of Google’ desire to provide ubiquitous infrastructure world wide.   On the surface, these efforts seem consistent with other incorrectly speculated projects such as Project Loon, Google’s attempt to provide Internet services to residents in the upper atmosphere through the use of high altitude balloons, and a project that has only recently become visible and the source of much public debate – known as ‘Project Floating Herring’, where apparently a significantly sized floating barge with modular container-based data centers sitting in the San Francisco Bay has been spied. 

“You will notice there is no power or network infrastructure going to any of those data center shipping containers,” said John Knownothing, chief Engineer at Dubious Lee Technical Engineering Credibility Corp.  “That’s because they have mastered wireless electrical transfer at the large multi-megawatt scale.” 

Real Estate rates in the Bay Area have increased almost exponentially over the last ten years making the construction of large scale data center facilities an expensive endeavor.  During the same period, The Port of San Francisco has unfortunately seen a steady decline of its import export trade.  After a deep analysis it was discovered that docking fees in the Port of San Francisco are considerably undervalued and will provide Google with an incredibly cheap real estate option in one of the most expensive markets in the world. 

It will also allow them to expand their use of renewable energy through the use of tidal power generation built directly into the barges hull.   “They may be able to collect as much as 30 kilowatts of power sitting on the top of the water like that”, continues Knownothing, “and while none of that technology is actually visible, possible, or exists, we are certain that Google has it.”

While the technical intricacies of the project fascinate many, the initiative does have its critics like Compass Data Center CEO, Chris Crosby, who laments the potential social aspects of this approach, “Life at sea can be lonely, and no one wants to think about what might happen when a bunch of drunken data center engineers hit port.”  Additionally, Crosby mentions the potential for a backslide of human rights violations, “I think we can all agree that the prospect of being flogged or keel hauled really narrows down the possibility for those outage causing human errors. Of course, this sterner level of discipline does open up the possibility of mutiny.”

However, the public launch of Project Floating Herring will certainly need to await the delivery of the more shrouded Project Rabbit Ears for various reasons.  Most specifically the primary reason for the development of this technology is so that Google can ultimately drive the floating facility out past twelve miles into International waters where it can then dodge all national, regional, and local taxation, the safe harbor and privacy legislation of any country or national entity on the planet that would use its services.   In order to realize that vision, in the current network paradigm, Google would need exceedingly long network cables  to attach to Network Access Points and Carrier Connection points as the facilities drive through international waters.

This is where Project Rabbit Ears becomes critical to the Google Strategy.   Making use of the deep earth mining equipment, Google will be able to drill deep into the Earths crust, into the mantle, and ultimately build a large Network Access Point near the Earth’s core.  This Planetary WIFI solution will be centrally located to cover the entire earth without the use of regional WIFI repeaters.  Google’s floating facilities could then gain access to unlimited bandwidth and provide yet another consumer based monetization strategy for the company. 

Knownothing also speculates that such a move would allow Google to make use of enormous amounts of free geo-thermic power and almost singlehandedly become the greenest power user on the planet.   Speculation also abounds that Google could then sell that power through its as yet un-invented large scale multi-megawatt wireless power transfer technology as unseen on its floating data centers.

Much of the discussion around this kind of technology innovation driven by Google has been given credible amounts of veracity and discussed by many seemingly intelligent technology based news outlets and industry organizations who should intellectually know better, but prefer not to acknowledge the inconvenient lack of evidence.

 

\Mm

Editors Note: I have many close friends in the Google Infrastructure organization and firmly believe that they are doing some amazing, incredible work in moving the industry along especially solving problems at scale.   What I find simply amazing is in the search for innovation how often our industry creates things that may or may not be there and convince ourselves so firmly that it exists. 

IPv6 to IPv4 Translation Made Business Beautiful. Think an Easy, less painful to your business in transitioning your Data Center.

I am a lover of simple, efficient, and beautiful things.  Ivan Peplnjak of ipSpace gets The Loosebolt’s Oscar Award for Elegance and Simplicity in a Complex Network Application.  There may not be a little statue holding up a giant router or anything but his solution to IPv4 to IPv6 translation on the Internet is pretty compelling and allows the application developers and IT folks to “outsource” all concerns about this issue to the network.

At some point your Data Centers and network are going to have to tackle the interface between the commercial IPv4 Internet and the IPv6 Internet.  If you are pretty aggressive on the IPv6 conversion in your data center, that pesky IPv4 Internet is going to prove to be a problem. Some think this can be handled by straight Network Address Translation, or having to dual home the servers in your data center on both networks.  But this challenge has cascading challenges to your organization.  Essentially it creates work for your System Admins, your developers, Web admins, etc.  In short, you may have to figure out solutions at every level of the stack.   I think Ivan’s approach makes it pretty simple and compelling if a bit of an unorthodox.  His use of Stateless IP/ICMP Translation,  which was originally intended a part of NAT64 and not on its own, solves an interesting problem and allows businesses to begin the conversion in a way that allows them to solve it one layer at a time and still allow those non-adopting IPv4 folks access to all the goodness within your data center.

His webcast on his approach can be found here.

\Mm