A New Beginning

Video Drives the Internet Forward

By Robert Lundy

April marked a milestone in the history of the Internet – a new beginning.  ABC and CBS announced trials for TV programming on the Internet.  Furthermore, Time Warner and other studios announced that they will make movies available on the Internet at the same time that they are released on DVD.  The New York Times presented a renovated web site that is optimized for streaming media and video.  Streaming media and video are no longer leading edge content, they are main stream.

This exciting phase promises to load the Internet with traffic unlike anything in the past.  In fact the analyst firm the Del ’Oro Group recently forecast a worldwide growth in Internet capacity of 300% to 400% by 2010.

Meanwhile, early adopters of the New Optical Internet are implementing networks based on architectures that employ large port-count intelligent optical switches so they can deliver services with guaranteed data rates and very low, predictable latencies.  Glimmerglass customers such as AMS-IX, the world’s largest Internet Peering Exchange in Amsterdam (http://www.ams-ix.net), demonstrate that the New Optical Internet will deploy intelligent optical switches in a mesh architecture directing wavelengths between IP routers to connect massive flows of streaming content.

In the months ahead, Glimmerglass will announce exciting new customer developments that respond to this new beginning.  Please stay tuned.