The current state of today's network technology, both for LAN and for WAN and Internet, was rooted, or call it limited by the computing capacity from 20 years ago....
The whole idea of the three layer design was because one layer of network devices just couldn't handle everything it needed to handle - it did not have the computing power at that time...
All the things of scalability, redundancy, policy enforcement, routing, QoS etc. etc...just can't be handled by a few devices...
NOW, it is a different story...The demand is different and the vast amount of computing capacity is different...from 20 years ago...But, one thing is still the same: the closeness of network devices and the protocols that run on top of it..
The change, inevitably, will drive a new model of network...It will be driven, initially, from large data centres...But, sooner or later, the change will dominate everything on the network layer and provide a revolutionary common structure..
The whole idea of the three layer design was because one layer of network devices just couldn't handle everything it needed to handle - it did not have the computing power at that time...
All the things of scalability, redundancy, policy enforcement, routing, QoS etc. etc...just can't be handled by a few devices...
NOW, it is a different story...The demand is different and the vast amount of computing capacity is different...from 20 years ago...But, one thing is still the same: the closeness of network devices and the protocols that run on top of it..
The change, inevitably, will drive a new model of network...It will be driven, initially, from large data centres...But, sooner or later, the change will dominate everything on the network layer and provide a revolutionary common structure..