One of the greatest moments a cloud evangelist indulges in occurs at that point a listener experiences an intuitive leap of understanding following your explanation of cloud computing. No greater joy and intrinsic sense of accomplishment.

Government IT managers, particularly those in developing countries, view information and communications technology (ICT) as almost a "black" art. Unlike the US, Europe, Korea, Japan, or other countries where Internet and network-enabled everything has diffused itself into the core of Generation "Y-ers," Millennials, and Gen "Z-ers." The black art gives IT managers in some legacy organizations the power they need to control the efforts of people and groups needing support, as their limited understanding of ICT still sets them slightly above the abilities of their peers.

But, when the "users" suddenly have that right brain flash of comprehension in a complex topic such as cloud computing, the barrier of traditional IT control suddenly becomes a barrier which must be explained and justified. Suddenly everybody from the CFO down to supervisors can become "virtual" data center operators – at the touch of a keyboard. Suddenly cloud computing and ICT becomes a standard tool for work – a utility.

This is the third part in an interview series with Martin Levy, Director of IPv6 Strategy at Hurricane Electric. In this segment Martin discusses the future of Hurricane Electric, IPv6, bandwidth, and global Internet development.

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Pacific-Tier: Can you cite one defining moment that really makes Hurricane Electric stand out as a company within the Internet industry?

I met Martin Levy for the first time in Honolulu at the Pacific Telecommunications Council '2007 conference. After several coffees at the Kalia Tower, and an hour or so discussions on data centers, networks, and IPv6, I knew I had found a true evangelist in the Internet industry. Several more conference coffees in different locations around the world, and I became one of his IPv6 disciples.

As a senior member of the Hurricane Electric team, Martin enthusiastically spreads the IPv6 word to locations around the world including Slovenia, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Taipei, Brussels, and the European Commission - in addition to acting as a consultant to IPv6 developers and global digital government policy groups.

An accomplished speaker and writer, Martin brings a unique talent effectively delivering IPv6 thought leadership and actual IPv6 network deployment experience to the Internet community.

This is part one of a Pacific-Tier Communications Thought Leadership series interview with Martin Levy, Director of IPv6 Strategy at Hurricane Electric. Hurricane Electric is a leading Internet backbone and colocation provider specializing in colocation, dedicated servers, direct Internet connections and web hosting.

The FCC finally moved the network neutrality debate forward Thursday, voting to begin developing open Internet regulations. The topic has become quite interesting over the past week, as strong-willed proponents and opponents of net neutrality turn up campaigns to influence law makers prior to voting on any net neutrality principles that may become law.

The debate is actually quite simple - should the government regulate, or not regulate the Internet? That discussion revolves around the six principles of network neutrality proposed by the FCC:

Under the draft proposed rules, subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service:

"Waste is Good"

So says the Gordon Gecko of data tech, Chris Anderson, in his July 2009 Wired Article of the same title.  His article goes on to state "Technology is becoming too cheap to meter.  So stop metering.  It's time to harness the power of abundance."

Using examples such as the Tsunami of junk videos on YouTube ("Making the World Safe for Cat Videos"), Anderson presents analogies from nature to make his case for promoting data waste.  If you look at the number of fertilized fish eggs produced .vs the number of fish actually making it to the end of their life cycle, you will see the ratio of survival is almost too small to calculate.  One in a million fish eggs actually finds its way to being a fish. 

Why does one house with a cable connection to the Internet have great performance, and the house next to them with a different Internet provider have marginal or potentially poor performance? The answer may lie in the sometimes dark art of Internet peering.

Peter Cohen stopped by to discuss the topic, and try and shed some light on peering recently at the North American Network Operator's Group (NANOG) conference in Philadelphia. Peter has worked in the peering community for more than 12 years, with experience at some of the largest Internet Service Provider networks in the United States, as well as managing peering for Telia-Sonera, the national telecom network of Sweden.

"Peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the customers of each network." Wikipedia

Hawaiian Telcom (HT) filed for bankruptcy protection in Dec 2008.  While management problems and billing issues helped accelerate HT's financial problems, the company also encountered a trend that is hitting the fixed-line telecom industry on a global scale. 

A Berstein report in April 2009 showed residential access lines in the United States decreased at a rate of 11.6% throughout all of 2008, while decreasing at 11.5% in just the 1^st quarter of 2009.  As fixed-line revenue decreases, there is a parallel decrease in state and federal tax revenues being collected, further contributing to budget shortfalls in states such as California. 

We expect that tax revenue recovery for telecommunications will find its way into broadband Internet, higher taxes on mobile phones, and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phones.

On May 20^th the Office of the US President released a new planning guide for US Government agency adoption of the Internet Protocol, version 6 (IPv6).  As the world's largest IT user, once the US Government finally starts moving ahead on a project, the rest of the world will finally need to take some serious notice.

IPv4 addresses are the machine language which tells Internet-connected applications how to find each other throughout the global network of networks.  Humans are familiar with names such as www.yahoo.com, however Internet applications and routing devices would see the same thing as 209.131.36.158.

The problem is that Internet Protocol, version 4 (IPv4) address space is nearly exhausted, with less than 15% of available address space remaining (of 4,294,967,296 total available IPv4 addresses).  Some experts, such as Paul Wilson (Dir Asia-Pacific Network Information Center) believe IPv4 addresses will start to dry up as soon as soon as June 2011. 

I am a fan of both Chaos Theory, and the Law of Plentitude.  I often refer to both when considering how best to design or build a new product, as it gives me a good reference on the potential of action, and resulting reaction when introducing a new technology or service into an existing market. 

In addition to highlighting the concepts of Chaos Theory and the Law of Plentitude, our blog discussion will also explore the idea of introducing disruptive technologies into an existing market, as a method of forcing an incumbant system to change.  

My company, CRG West, operates one of the largest Internet Exchange points (IXPs) in the United States called the Any2 Exchange.  The Any2 Exchange has been operated as a not-for-profit utility for the past couple of years, serving the Internet community. This article explores the concept behind Any2, disruptive technologies and chaos, and how focusing on the development of communities within the telecom and Internet industry (and the Law of Plentitude) helped build one of the largest Internet interconnection points in the country. While we will concentrate on the Any2 Exchange, the idea behind Any2 could just as easily be applied to any other public or commercial IXP - or market.