A new study by US company Nemertes Research has warned that increased demand for bandwidth could see the Internet running out of capacity by 2010.
With increased amounts of data being transmitted, that could mean severe slowdowns and possibly even Internet gridlock. The study estimates that $137 billion needs to be spent to upgrade networks to make them completely fit for purpose.
“It may take more than one attempt to confirm an online purchase or it may take longer to download the latest video from YouTube," the report stated.
That would cause problems, but the longer-term effect could be more drastic. The lack of bandwidth could well stifle the next generation of companies.
And what is causing this band width crisis? You guessed it: new media.
Is this science fiction? A panic attack? Perhaps, but AT&T has issued a similar statement:
U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.
They blame video and "user-generated content being uploaded." Now, did I miss something, but didn't the internet start out as "user-generate content"? Granted, the tools are much more accessible now than they used to be. Of course, this may all be a scam to justify "priortizing" content,
Although Cicconi's speech did not explicitly refer to the term "Net neutrality," some audience members tackled him on the issue in a question-and-answer session, asking whether the subtext of his speech was really around prioritizing some kinds of traffic. Cicconi responded by saying he believed government intervention in the Internet was fundamentally wrong.
Net neutrality is the idea that all content should distributed equally, without regard for who generates the content or who is searching for it. In reality, the case seems to be that network users tend to get priority on their own networks. For example, one reason my video for class does not always work, at least according to Bridge Control, is that my signal has to go through multiple vendors. And, say, ComCast gives priority to ComCast users rather than to the SBC/AT&T user waiting to get through.
So how might people priortize in the future? Perhaps according to whether I am shopping at JC Penny or Chico's? Kohl's or Ann Taylor? Maybe priorities are for sale.
2 comments:
They phrased is incorrectly. The internet could never "fill up" it isn't one computer holding everything on the internet, its an uncountable amount of computer sitting in server rooms or someone's house. It should be phrased, "Will there be fast enough computers to handle the up rising demand on big websites." The answer is yes, all this is is another y2k. Take the demand on google's servers for example, with massive amount of people logging on from their computers and a growing amount of android phone users the demand is huge, but they have the technology to handle it and provide a fast service. This theory of the internet filling up is just silly.
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