CloudShield is a company whose explicit mission is to break the end-to-end nature of the Internet by creating high-capaciity packet-filters that can allow the phone company to decide which of your bits are important and which ones are unimportant. So, for example, if you were a physicist who invented a new protocol called http and a new service that runs on top of it called the WWW, you wouldn't be able to deploy it until you'd gotten all the CloudSheild filters to recognize your new system. Boy, that sounds like a real improvement to the Internet as we know it.
The Internet will choke under its own success if intelligence continues to be relegated only to the edge of the network. The notion that networks should remain 'dumb' and simply perform transport is outdated. Deploying certain application functions closer to the network core, instead of solely at the edge, relieves pressure on downstream access devices and applications, and allows the network to be more efficient, manageable, resilient and secure.
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(via Isen.blog)
