He said, “Ah, so it’s time for an EDGE QUEST Eight.” I replied in some educated way, saying “wha?” Randy responded (fortunately not referring to me as “Grasshopper”) that we should ping a select group with 8 questions and then have them distribute it to others, and so forth, effectively letting the Human Network itself disseminate it and compile feedback.

The Cisco EDGE QUEST Tournament of Aces is underway. And, many of you are tearing-it-up in as you work towards a top 100 score that will give you the opportunity to compete for US $10,000 and an ASR 1002 router (signed by the lead architect).

As I mentioned in my last post, throughout the qualifying round (May 5th through June 11th), we’re going to introduce tips-n-tricks, news and fun, creative ways to engage with us during the tournament. So…

A question for you….
Of all the questions that I’ve had on the EDGE QUEST game, I was expecting to get the most around what we did to make the Cisco ASR hypercraft fly (that would be a fun request to try to get past our engineers in a roadmap concept commit meeting…). Nope. Instead, I’ve had the most questions about the look of the Cisco ASR hypercraft. “Why not add stripes?” “Can you make it all black?” “How about teal with red stripes?”

Enough is enough.

Do you think you have a better design idea for the Cisco ASR craft? If so, bring your artistic vision and skills to the Cisco ASR EDGE QUEST Hypercraft Design Bake Off.

How does this work?

• Easy -- Simply, go to our Facebook page and choose one of the three Cisco ASR 1000 Series router models and start designing. Add new parts and color away!


• Submissions can be scanned or uploaded until 9 p.m. Pacific Time on May26 (5 a.m. UTC on May 27).


• The top two designs will be revealed on May 27, and then it will be up to YOU to pick narrow the field where one will be chosen.


• All can participate (and because it is about a router, see if you can’t apply the time to your “training” development goal for the year…


• For 'terms of submission', click here.

Why do it?
Bragging rights and a chance to see your design “in lights.” Your craft could very well be featured in the final EDGE QUEST Tournament of Aces winner take all "Money Round" that will take place on June 16, 2008.

Have fun, get creative, and submit your design today. Who knows.. may be with your design, the engineers will listen a bit longer to the “flying router” idea…

Live long and network!

I’m pleased to be officially announcing the Cisco Edge Quest Tournament of Aces. Thousands have played Cisco Edge Quest, an online game we introduced when we launched the new Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers, the world’s most powerful compact router. In the game, players maneuver a hypercraft modeled after the router through various levels and increasingly use its capabilities to defend the network edge. It’s fast, fun, and hey, since learning comes through playing, it may even be able to be applied toward your “training” development goal at work…

Now in this tournament, you can play, challenge a friend, and see if you score high enough during the qualifying round to be eligible to compete in the “money round” -- a 24 hour winner-take-all battle where the highest scorer receives US$10,000 and a Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router (signed by the Senior Vice Presidents aka Network Commanders Pankaj Patel and Tony Bates along with lead architects of the product… I mean when was the last time you had a “signature edition” router?!)

The Tournament of Aces will starts today, May 5 through June 11th, with top 100 qualifiers then going on to compete in a 24 hour battle on June 16th which will feature some brand new levels.

Fortunately, things turned out just that way – while the Cisco ASR launch happened two months ago, the Facebook group that we call “Support Group for Uber User Internet Addicts” is still going strong with over 700 members, and it’s starting to create a life of its own. Of the recent activities we’ve had on the group (another one kicks off on Monday), this particular survey really generated a lot of participation. We asked the group, “You know you are an internet addict when…” and true to form, they collaborated in Human Network fashion came through with quite an entertaining list, below, proving that Web 2.0 not is a great platform for collaboration, but also that those uber-users are quite fun, too. Enjoy!

Live long and network,
Doug

BTW, if you’re reading this blog, you’re an Internet Addict too, so you might as well fess up to it an join too… !

Last year, the conference moved to Milan, where the topic was IMS, or IP Multimedia Subsystem. While many of the vendors were jumping on the IMS bandwagon with abandon, Cisco has what I believe to be a more balanced view of IMS. Rather, instead of looking at it as an end-all-be-all approach to deliver services over the IP network, a provider should look at it as one potential part of the solution but not the only one needed. Because IMS is based on SIP, it can’t support many high demand and important current and future services that are non-SIP, from web-browsing to IPTV – and many of the services to be delivered over IMS, such as VoIP, are already delivered over IP in a non-SIP fashion, making its value quite questionable. Add lengthy standards body procedures into the mix, and it makes sense not to bet everything that IMS is going to be an SP savior.

What's behind this traffic growth? Personally, all you have to do is look inside any of our homes to see the drivers. Let's take mine as an example. My 15 year old son has stopped watching television and lives his academic and social life in the virtual world through a laptop or through a game console. My 12 year old daughter is also spending more time online with her friends but with slightly different interests. What's most intriguing is that my 8 year old son is watching videos online continually. Even my wife prefers to occasionally catch snipets of her favorite shows from the www than on live television. As soon as a provider can deliver faster bandwidth to my house, they can count on me as a customer. Where am I going with this? I know that I am not an exception but more of the standard of homes with kids. It is clear that video is the big driver of this growth and will continue to be as we increase the number of creators of content and consumers of content and ways that it can be consumed.

Here are a few of the takeaways for those who like the Cliffnotes versions:

At Home, the story is video, video, video. Here are some video’s effects as a driver of bandwidth growth.

• Three years from now, Internet video will be six times what it is today, and twenty times what it was in 2006.
• In 2011, online video will generate 1 billion DVDs worth of traffic each month.
• Online video will drive 30% of consumer Internet traffic by 2011.

At Work, new business services and applications will drive the growth:
• By 2010, telepresence will generate more traffic than the entire US Internet backbone in 2000.

On the Move: the coming ubiquity of Mobile Data
• Mobile data traffic in 2011 will be sixteen times what it is today.

The next few years should be quite exciting for the industry, and, because providers are actively investing in their networks to get ahead of the end customer demand for bandwidth and value-added service, the next three years will have quite a beneficial impact to all aspects of our own Connected Lives as well.

Enjoy and thanks for reading,
Doug

Second Life is pretty intriguing and here’s a New York Times blog post about amping up the reality part of virtual reality even further.

At Cisco, our customers are often awe-struck when we conduct a presentation over or give a demonstration of Cisco TelePresence – with its high definition screens and spatial sound, the experience becomes so real that you have to resist the urge to shake hands with the participants on the other side of the table (who actually are thousands of miles away). As innovations such what is presented in the video on this post build upon virtual reality and “transposed reality” such as Cisco TelePresence, the holodeck and remote Holographic “presence” that was envisioned by NTT years ago and even demonstrated by Cisco the past fall, may very well enter the mainstream far sooner that many think.

Intercompany: SizeMatters.

One of the key parts of this announcement is the “Intercompany” capability. An intercompany Cisco TelePresence network service, which enables customers to maintain close contact with their extended supply chain or community of interest, has the potential to transform business. Furthermore, as more people use a network service –Telephony, Internet, Web 2.0 social networking, or Intercompany TelePresence, the more valuable the service becomes. Greater value attracts more users, creating a positive feedback loop and continued usage growth – that’s the “Network Effect”. It is no wonder the NewAT&T shares this vision with Cisco;according to Wikipedia, network effect was presented in the 1908 annual report by then AT&T President Theodore Vail --- 100 years ago!.... and now IP DNA meets network DNA, fitting anniversary event ….

How will Verizon Wireless comply with the openness rules? They revealed some plans in New York city, on March 19, when they unveiled their Open Development initiative. I arrived at the event with some skepticism. I've written before about how the Internet business model challenges the culture of the mobile industry (see Where Worlds Collide). But after an enthusiastic welcome by Tony Lewis, the vice president of Open Development, the Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg gave a keynote that addressed these issues directly. He recognized the intersecting megatrends of mobility and the Internet as prompting a new wave of applications, which no single company can create by itself. Instead, Verizon embraces an ecosystem approach, which motivates this new Open Development activity.

Service Providers are familiar with SONET rings and they expect Ethernet based rings in Carrier Ethernet networks to perform similarly. However, Ethernet rings are expected to behave like Ethernet networks with oversubscription, redundant access, node protection, link aggregation and so on. Thus, Ethernet ring requirements can be more complicated than SONET ring requirements.

Do we have to mandate a ring topology in Carrier Ethernet networks?

It will be very attractive if a protocol can support both ring and mesh topologies in Carrier Ethernet networks.

Essentially, with an Application Aware service, businesses identify their applications as critical, important and best-effort, classifications that align to the business goal for application availability. Creating an Application Aware service requires that dynamic QoS be deployed in the carriers IP NGN, along with, the ability to tune the QoS mechanisms as required. Customer satisfaction hinges on the carriers ability to successfully deliver application aware SLAs. This is an excellent opportunity for MSP’s, as, new applications are demanding new levels of QoS on the networks.

In recent years, leading companies in India have begun re-defining globalization by turning the tide, expanding out and establishing leadership positions, or acquiring companies outright, in a variety of industries previously dominated by businesses from established nations. According to KPMG, Indian companies acquired 62 companies in the first 8 months of 2005, to the tune of $1.7B, and the pace just keeps accelerating. The world’s largest steel company, Arcelor-Mittal, was created less than two years ago by the successful pursuit by an emerging markets bellwether firm of an established Western counterpart, consisting of a small group of 100+-year-old companies. And if the purchase of a Jaguar or Land Rover is in your future, you will soon be making the check out to an Indian firm, Tata Motors.