The Haves And Have Nots

What on the odometer clocks out as a 34-mile commute, and which takes a mere 50 minutes at dawn, can become a two-hour nightmare when there's a home game. Naturally, then, I was intrigued by this story in The New York Timesabout how various states are addressing what apparently is becoming a profound problem across the United States -- the highway system's inability to handle increasing traffic volumes. And states increasing willingness to outsource the problem to private investors. Would you pay a premium to blow through all those other cars parked next to you on the road? There are nights when I sure would.

Anyway, I got to thinking how analogous this actually is to corporate network congestion.

With applications such as VoIP, Webcasting and the like becoming more prevalent at the corporate level, I can only imagine that traffic control is becoming a more complex and perplexing challenge by the day.

I know administrative tools extend the ability to grant priority to certain applications over others on the network, and at certain times. But does anyone actually "charge" for the right to override that access? Seems like this is a premise that lies within the on-demand computing discussion. What can you share about your approaches here?

All for now