On February 17, the Chairman of the FCC (Federal Communication Commission), Julius Genachowski, proposed a decade long program to provide a minimum of 100 MBPS link access to every household in the US.  The Chairman said the FCC plan would set “ambitious but achievable goals” in remarks to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners conference.

Genachowski said speedier Internet service would help create jobs and economic growth.

Data shows that about 64 percent of U.S. households used a high-speed Internet service in 2009, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday. That is a 25 percent increase from 51 percent two years earlier.

Some internet providers already called this program “unrealistic”, given the current estimate of the average access speed at less than 4 MBPS. However, Verizon, the third-largest provider, and one that has a more advanced network than many competitors, said it has completed successful trials of 100 Mbps and higher through its fiber-optic FiOS network. Today, Verizon offers programs with 50 MBPS access, at a premium.

The FCC announcement should not come as s a surprise, given Google announcement from the beginning of February that it will pilot a deployment of 100 MBPS links to certain communities. Not surprising, the first newspaper to report this development was the Korean Times, the country with the most widely available high speed Internet service for home consumers.

Why 100 MBPS matters? Obviously, it will open the possibility for stay home Moms to join the work force by becoming part of corporate networks; will open great opportunities for home-schooling connected to on-line interactive schools and colleges and open a whole new world of entertainment and leisure activities, like interactive TV, collaborative gaming, real-time social interaction and more.

The key message is very clear – BIG pipes and FASTER applications are on the way.  We need to ensure this new environment can handle our demands.  Shunra technologies allow you to emulate the network environment, introducing real world impairments to test those media rich applications in a controlled lab environment. Shunra has been providing this capability for more than 10 years and now, more than ever, is the time to prepare.

However, we may need to apply a sobriety test, where are those servers? And how far out is my virtual storage?  A recent article in Scientific Computing (http://www.scientificcomputing.com/articles-HPC-Cloud-Computing-Pie-in-the-sky-120109.aspx) reminds us that the flexibility of an elastic infrastructure comes with strings attached.

The author presents a case for testing adequate bandwidth, as well as measuring and testing network latency.  Virtual machines can introduce additional latency through the time-sharing nature of the underlying hardware. Since the service provider — and not the scientist — control the hardware, unanticipated sharing and reallocation of machines can significantly affect runtimes.

My conclusion from this article, and others, dealing with the latency issues induced by Cloud Computing, is to include a rigorous testing phase before committing to a migration. An end to end latency measurement and emulation are probably the best ways to ensure smooth adoption of this exciting new technology.