Every few decades, technology forces the world to level up.
The network always evolves because it has to — not because anyone wants to.

And now, here we are again.
Only this time, the pressure isn’t coming from people.
It’s coming from AI.

Businesses feel it already — not consciously, but in the cracks:

• Slow Wi-Fi
• Cheap switches burning out
• VPNs dropping
• Old coax lines choking during peak hours
• Tools not syncing
• Random glitches
• “Why is this so slow today?”

These aren’t random annoyances.
They are symptoms of the next evolution.

To see where we’re going, you have to understand where we came from.

1970s: The Network Was Born (But Barely Alive)

ARPANET.
Packet switching.
A handful of nodes passing tiny packets of data.
Academic experiments.
Military research.

Back then, the network didn’t “perform.”
It existed, and that was enough.

1980s: Ethernet and Local Networks

Businesses started wiring buildings.
Ethernet standardized.
LANs were born.
Dial-up became the average person’s on-ramp.

But everything was slow and isolated.
The future hadn’t arrived yet.

1990s: The Internet Era Begins

TCP/IP wins.
ISPs launch.
Everyone goes online.
Email becomes oxygen.
Websites become storefronts.

Everything exploded — and networks broke constantly.

2000s: Broadband, Wi-Fi, and the Rise of Online Business

DSL and cable replaced dial-up.
Wi-Fi entered every home and office.
Online business went mainstream.
Mobile data arrived.

Networks had to evolve again — or collapse under early streaming, SaaS, and cloud adoption.

2010s: Cloud, Mobile, Streaming, Remote Work

AWS, Azure, Netflix, YouTube, iPhone, Zoom.

The entire world moved online.
And once again, networks cracked.
So what happened?

We adapted:

• SD-WAN
• Fiber expansion
• Better routing
• Edge caching
• 4G/LTE

Each evolution was reactive.
Technology pushed, networking caught up.

2020s: Edge, Fiber Everywhere, 5G, IoT, Multi-Cloud

We entered the “fast” decade.
Gigabit fiber.
5G.
Real-time workloads.
Distributed architectures.

But even today’s modern networks were built for humans using apps…

Not AI running the world in the background.

And that brings us here.

Now We’re Entering the AI Era — and This One Is Different

This time, the network isn’t adapting because of:

• More users
• More devices
• More apps

It’s adapting because AI is a new type of workload.

A completely different kind of load.
Constant.
Relentless.
Bidirectional.
Massive.
Invisible.
Always on.

**Humans browse.

AI operates.**

This is the difference.

And the truth is simple:

The AI era will break every network that refuses to evolve.

Here’s why.

AI Creates a New Class of Network Pressure

1. AI moves enormous amounts of data — constantly.

Training.
Inference.
Retrieval.
Routing.
Orchestration.
Agent<>agent communication.

All of it is network-dependent.

2. AI workloads require ultra-low latency.

Milliseconds matter.
Old switches, old routers, coax, and cheap Wi-Fi simply can’t keep up.

3. AI is distributed.

Your phone, your laptop, a data center, an edge node, and another cluster are all talking — in real time.

4. AI expands the attack surface.

Security becomes non-negotiable.
Zero trust + identity-driven networking isn’t optional anymore.

**5. Human traffic used to be the load.

AI traffic is the new load — and it’s 1,000x bigger.**

We’re About to Watch the Same Pattern Play Out Again

Just like:

• dial-up → broadband
• copper → fiber
• 3G → LTE
• on-prem → cloud
• traditional routing → SD-WAN

AI will force the next evolution of the network.

This is already happening inside data centers — InfiniBand, optical interconnects, next-gen Ethernet, GPU networking.

And the ripple hits small business first, because small business runs on old gear longest.

What the Future Network Looks Like

To handle AI, networks will need to be:

• Autonomous

Self-healing, self-optimizing, self-routing.

• Edge-first

Compute moves closer to where work happens.

• Fiber-based

Copper is dead weight in the AI decade.

• 5G-enhanced

Wireless becomes production-grade, not backup.

• Latency-optimized, not just bandwidth-optimized

• Secure by design — identity → routing → trust

• Built for continuous inference

This is the new reality.

And businesses that don’t prepare now will get blindsided.

Why This Matters for Michigan

I say this a lot lately:

AI is going to expose every weak link in every business.

Some companies will adapt.
Some won’t make the turn.

I live here.
I work here.
My clients are here.
I want Michigan businesses to win the 2026–2030 decade.

That’s why I’m pushing this message so hard.

The Bottom Line

We’re entering the biggest shift in networking since the dawn of the internet.

Every prior evolution was big.

This one is bigger.

Not because humans demand more…

But because AI will demand more from humans, businesses, infrastructure, and everything in between.

And the network — the part everyone forgets about — will either carry that weight…

Or crack under it.