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I was recently meeting with a Web 2.0 company discussing their network infrastructure plans. As I started asking questions about their racks of servers, their storage area network (SAN), their plans for routing, load-balancing and network security, the CTO of the company stopped me and made a bold statement.

He said, “The Internet is like electricity. We plug into it and all of the things that you mention are already there for us. We don’t spend any time at all on network or server infrastructure plans.”

To this CTO, knowing the details of his network and server infrastructure was like knowing the details of the local utility electricity grid – not required. Is this a bad thing, or proof that networking technologies have succeeded?

I guess I am old school, but I recall in the not-so-distant past that every startup needed a plan for their network and server infrastructure and even knew the details of their service providers network – are they using OSPF and BGP? What is the latency across the local peering point? Who are their upstream network peers? How are their firewalls and load-balancers configured? What blocks of IP addresses have I been assigned and how are they routed?

Some companies, like InterNAP and Level 3, have businesses that emphasize their network optimization and network architectures. I don’t know of any electricity optimization companies and I don’t have any idea of the architectures they have built.

My roots are in network engineering and I have spent a good part of my career building network devices and global IP-based networks and services. I’ve spent years studying routing protocols, quality of service algorithms, security mechanisms to prevent DDoS attacks and have every field of the IPv4 packet header memorized.

When the CTO of a Web 2.0 company does not know how a router or switch works (or even what layer of the OSI model they even operate on), I tend to cringe a bit.

I guess I’m reluctant to admit that my technical depth in networking has been abstracted to not being relevant in the Web 2.0 world of social networking, mash-ups, RSS and AJAX. I know that a well-architected network can have a dramatic affect on application performance – but maybe on today’s high-speed Internet it does not matter. It might be that network engineers are not relevant for today’s Internet in the same way that software optimization engineers are seemingly not relevant for Microsoft applications.

On the other hand, I see the current state of the Internet as the ultimate success of these networking technologies. You can deploy a wildly successful Web 2.0 application that serves millions of users and never know how a router, switch or load-balancer works. Even network security and firewalls that were making headline news not more than a few years ago are considered perfunctory. The success of these networking devices and technologies has enabled them to become part of the technology landscape that exists for all to use as they see fit, similar to the microprocessor or electricity.

In your opinion, has the Internet reached a level of abstraction similar to electricity? Do you use the infrastructure that is given to you by your local Internet service provider or a specialized hosting facility like Amazon without questioning how it is architected and designed?

In my role as a venture capitalist, the answers to these questions will help me determine if startups that are building optimized networking devices, improving network security, virtualizing storage, and so forth are required in today’s market.

Allan Leinwand is a venture partner with Panorama Capital and founder of Vyatta. He was also the CTO of Digital Island.

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With its business still recording losses and saddled with debt, you would think that Internet backbone provider Level 3 would be trying to keep as many customers as it can. That’s why the company’s decision to pull the plug on a small Pennsylvania ISP is puzzling, especially since the ISP heatedly disputes Level 3’s claims of acceptable-use violations.

Is it just a case of he said-she said between Level 3 and (no pun intended) Said, Inc. (owners of ISP Saidcom), or is it the sign of a bigger strategy inside Level 3 to cut costs by lopping off the least-productive customers of some of its recent acquisitions?

Whatever the case, the real losers so far have been the Pennridge, Pa., school district and several hundred area businesses and residents, who have been without Internet service since Level 3 cut it off abruptly on Feb. 22.

The ISP in question, the still-offline Saidcom, provides local Internet access via fixed wireless in and around Perkasie, Pa., a town located about halfway between Philadelphia and Allentown. Saidcom, which began operations in late 2002, recently added a dedicated-server hosting business which got popular quickly, but also appears to be the root of the problems. Saidcom inherited Level 3 as its sole fiber-based Internet access provider when Level 3 acquired Pennsylvania-based service provider TelCove last May.

While Saidcom executives admit that there were several usage problems (including instances of large-volume email blasts, sites with links to child pornography and an eBay “scam” site) originating from the ISP’s hosted-server business, they also felt confident that they were working to resolve any problems as quickly as they could, shutting down offending sites and reporting incidents to the FBI and local law authorities as appropriate.

“We shut quite a few [sites] down,” Saidcom CEO Art Siwert said in a phone call Wednesday. “If there was a problem reported, we dealt with it immediately and swiftly.”

Siwert said that Level 3 had sent Saidcom a couple of “cease and desist” notices in January, revolving around a large volume of email originating from a Saidcom-hosted server. While Siwert said the email in question wasn’t necessarily spam, Saidcom did comply with Level 3’s requests to shut down the offending site.

“The last conversation I had with Level 3’s head of security [in early February] was him telling us ‘thank you for complying, and keep going in the same direction,’ ” Siwert recalled. Then on Feb. 22, at about 5:30 p.m., Siwert said the same person called to say there had been another single violation, and “your network is going down.” Thirty minutes later, Siwert said, Saidcom’s sole 100 Mbps connection to Level 3 — and the Internet — was offline.

As Siwert told a local newspaper, Level 3’s decision “was a blind-sided surprise. It’s what a large company can do to small company.”

Level 3, which was conducting analyst meetings Wednesday, did not make a senior executive available for comment. A company spokesperson did say that the termination of Saidcom’s service was because of “a violation of the Level 3 acceptable use policy,” specifically regarding unsolicited commercial email that Level 3 had received repeated complaints about. The spokesperson said that “formal notices were sent” to Saidcom about the violations. The Level 3 spokesperson did not comment on what level of spam complaints or what types of ISP response times would trigger such discontinuances of service.

For Saidcom, the struggle now is to find another backbone provider to bring Internet service to its operations center. “We’re limping,” said Siwert, who expected a delay of at least another week to 10 days before an alternative provider could bring in service. That leaves Saidcom’s approximately 2,500 residential and business customers — as well as local schools and the fire department — disconnected from their broadband access.

Local message boards have provided an outlet for people to vent at both Level 3 and Saidcom, the latter for not having an adequate backup solution, and the former for apparently ditching a small-potatoes customer over a questionable dispute. Several telecom professionals contacted Tuesday and Wednesday expressed surprise over Level 3’s move, saying such problems are usually solved by mutual agreement, since both the provider and ISP typically have a vested interest in keeping the business relationship alive.

Siwert said Saidcom had previously negotiated with TelCove to add another 100 Mbps line, with more expected in the future. But he also acknowledged that small service-provider startups are often at the mercy of bigger carriers, who may or may not fully explain their actions.

“Until you build to a certain level, you have to rely on a national backbone provider,” said Siwert. “It just doesn’t seem right that they could shut us down.”

Which brings to mind another question, one which the Level 3 spokesperson did not answer: Is this a single, isolated occurence, or are there other small ISPs who have suffered a similar fate at Level 3’s hands? If so, let us know.

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