Daily Network Monitor

If your wondering why confusion is mutating from one area of the network to the next, sit down with a large cup of coffee and read a weeks worth of hypothesis by varying authors regarding the look of converging networks and the resulting change in the network administrators’ role.

Last night I read the follow-up posting from a GigaOM article debating the merits of having a network engineer/administrator on the staff of a Web 2.0 company. The post’s author, Allan Leinwand, says a Web 2.0er recently told him that connecting to the Internet was like connecting to the electrical grid - you don’t need an electrical engineering degree for the latter and you don’t need a network engineer for the former.

I call this absolute nonsense and commend the Network World online staff for correctly pointing out, “the very servers that you read NW blogs on are at a co-location facility. Had we just allowed the third party to manage our systems, we may not have discovered a peering issue that was causing a decrease in site performance. Maybe these Web 2.0ers need to think a little more deeply about the plumbing side of the Web instead of just trying to impress their peers with the latest AJAX script.”

The world of Web 2.0 is exciting but it’s my strong opinion that it provides new challenges and opportunities for the network administrator and not the elimination of his or her job. The comparison of Web 2.0 to an electrical grid is tactically accurate but does not illustrate the enormous complexity that Web 2.0 provide – after all, I can’t recall another technology initiative that promised every device in the network connectivity.

I think we better hold on to the network administrators.