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20 Nov 2007
The internet could suffer a dramatic slowdown by 2010 as the sheer scale of data exceeds the ability of the network to cope.
Analyst firm Nemertes Research Group has spent the past year analysing data flows over the internet and the core infrastructure that carries that information.
The company has concluded that serious bottlenecks will occur in three to five years.
"Our findings indicate that core fibre and switching/routing resources will scale nicely to support virtually any conceivable user demand," said the Nemertes report.
"But internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years.
"We estimate that the financial investment required by access providers to 'bridge the gap' between demand and capacity ranges from $42bn to $55bn, or roughly 60 to 70 per cent more than service providers currently plan to invest. "
The authors do not envisage that the internet will actually fail to operate, but that access times and bandwidth constraints will fall to such levels that innovation will be seriously hampered.
The next generation of YouTube, for example, would not be possible in this scenario, according to the research.
E-commerce will also be hit hard as access times will be erratic, and customers will be turned off and less able to make purchases.
Business will suffer much less, however, since most have access to fast network connections that are unavailable to consumers.
"Consumers are often not able to purchase these 'fat pipes' at any price," the report continues.
"So an additional effect of the bandwidth crunch at the edges would be to increase the gap between the 'haves' (chiefly businesses) and the 'have-nots' (chiefly consumers)."
The report echoes earlier warnings by Dr Larry Roberts who led the team that built the internet's predecessor, Arpanet.
Dr Roberts warned last month that the internet would be in trouble unless serious technological advances were achieved in networking.
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Do you agree?
Meltdown caused by us
various articles covered in the past few months have all been focused around how Internet usage and bandwidth would be 50 times more than today and the content created then would jam the internet space. Typically utilization of bandwidth and usage is directly proportional to the no.,quality & results of QUERIES that a user inputs from the moment he logs on. These queries can be as simple as searching, or as intense as uploading. At the end of it, its all about minimizing the no. of queries. We are trying to research the potential ways of minimizing these queries by pre-defining most searched ?keywords? & ?categories?. By not entering any search query, or typing for searches you would be skipping multiple steps and help in saving energy and bandwidth. If we all try and add to this pre-defined list of searches, we can help save far more energy, bandwidth and money. Help us all move towards the green technology.
Posted by: Ankur Dewani 15 Sep 2008
Too little time to fix
internet expansion is the cause of this problem. more people traffic on the internet every year with not enough upgrades being done on communication lines, backbone networks, and mainline servers. this is the slowdown we have been waiting for.
Posted by: Megan 04 Aug 2008
stop the spam to stop the meltdown
Spam or unwanted emails are killing the internet and jamming up peoples email accounts. If the emails were authenticated with a y/n and a code before sending then maybe the traffic would reduce and spammers would be out of business. I know I delete around 200 per day without even looking at them.
Posted by: jeff 01 Jan 2008
U S I N G S PA C E
im taking up space on the internet look at me blah blah blah blah blah blah.... etc
Posted by: blah blah blah 25 Nov 2007
Should allow access to P2P openly
I know, this becomes a bit issue in some time. "Shutdown/less privacy data/infomation or ownership". Set a domain, allow to share or access freely for everyone that reduces overloading... Needless to say, find the best way for Data compression...
Posted by: inet.mg 20 Nov 2007
what?!
I don't think the Internet can face any "meltdown" like you're epically describing.. The speed pretty much depends on -how many user are using the same service-, and not -how much data there is-.. You're not giving enough info why is this going to happen, which doesn't look like a research.. And what about "package checking" - isn't it slower if the packages need to be tested..? You said: "Data flow records also need to be kept, which would help in dealing with denial of service attacks." What is this about..? Another control scam..?
Posted by: rikimaru 20 Nov 2007
really..?
with respect.. why don't you explain that to us Iain Thomson..? You seem to understand: "Too much data running on too little infrastructure".
Posted by: rikimaru 20 Nov 2007