Web 2.0....is it the same as electricity?

Electricity is something people rarely think about. They just plug in their devices and off they go. Very rarely do you see anyone trying to figure out the power grid and all of its intricacies. Recently, some discussion has surfaced as to whether the evolution of web 2.0 technologies has caused less of a need of network engineering. At first, I thought this was ridiculous but at second glance....I don’t know... I am on the fence. Network engineering deals with things such as Network Latency, Bandwidth issues, Routing protocols, network layouts, etc. From what I can remember from my networking class in college, we were taught that network architectures play an important role in delivery of service on a given network. There are many network topologies to consider, hardware pieces to buy, etc. A well planned and detailed architecture would be the foundation of a low-latency, low error network. At the same time, applications (and services) existed within internal networks and the idea of leveraging a service from various outside networks was not really on the rise. Thus the thought of a lessened need of Network engineers first seems preposterous to me. But now...given that may web 2.0 app reside on distributed networks and not within company walls, some of the things that were issues before may no longer be much of a concern. Additionally, computing power of servers and such has grown exponentially and some would even say its hard to reach high levels of utility. So now that servers can do so much more with less and more and more applications may be housed outside of a companies boundaries....it leads me to believe that maybe..just maybe that job of a network engineering may be a little easier..even if its just by a small amount.

Another aspect to consider though is the amount of data these Web 2.0 companies are processing. The data rates I am assuming are high and most likely will continue to rise exponentially as more and more people joins the web 2.0 revolution. I guess, if I had to choose a side, I would say that overall, the job of a network engineers is getting more and more complex. Years ago, network engineers dealt with a limited number of servers that made up a confined network. Now, things are very different and there is more to understand and comprehend.

Below is an article that discusses just this issue. (http://gigaom.com/2007/04/10/web-20-death-of-the-network-engineer)