You all know the real reason: Pr0n! So, to save our interwebitubes, keep your hands on the table and only read DU!
Internet ‘brownouts’ feared by 2010 as user traffic soars
Rising demand for bandwidth-hogging Internet activities such as swapping music files and watching YouTube videos threatens to outstrip the Web’s infrastructure within three years, creating the spectre of service “brownouts” and potentially thwarting the development of the next Google-sized application, an industry-funded study warns.
Despite all the talk about the Internet’s infinite possibilities, a study by U.S. firm Nemertes Research found that projected increases in Internet traffic are poised to eclipse the capacity of the Web’s broadband access infrastructure – essentially the points where users “plug in” to the Internet via cable, phone or fibre optic lines –as early as 2010.
The study predicts that, in the absence of billions worth of new investments, Internet users will begin to notice a marked degradation in their online experiences within three to five years as bandwidth-heavy applications such as VoIP (Voice-over Internet Protocol), video-on-demand and various file-sharing schemes become more popular among individuals and corporations alike.
They’ve been going on like that for years. I think they’re trying to milk us for goverrment funding. Communications companies are making enough profits to be able to fund the expansion of their own infrastructures.
Nope nope nope nope nope.
“Industry funded”, i.e. the telecom industry, which is fighting desperately (albeit quietly) to derail the idea of network neutrality. That’s all this “report” is, and hopefully, most people will see it as that.
Shameful.
1997 I remember a similar discussion that went something along the lines of “playing back video on the web? The infrastructure won’t handle the load.” Now in the post above the movie Bloodspell (90 mins.) is available for everyone to go and view. To summarize I am with amodedoma.
It’s about time to start doing some protocol prioritization, so that real-time services are ensured adequate bandwidth and performance.
We need a design where services provided by a vendor are tagged and certified in terms of prioritization, and all ISP’s are required by law to enforce that prioritization.
So for example voice gets priority 1, live video streams get prority 1, IM gets priority 2, email gets pririty 4, etc. If your application is not certified in terms of priority, it gets lowest priority. Some kind of secure certificate would setup the priority for the packet type.
Only the ignorant continue to laugh at Stevens. Wait, Uncle Dave started this one. Nevermind.
@Awake, I dunno man, that kinda doesn’t sound like it would go well with the concept of net neutrality… Besides, who would govern the “certificates”? The telcos?
What about all that “dark fiber” we keep hearing about? Wasn’t that supposed to last us for decades more?
I have a 15 megabit connection but I seldom ever see that speed. Most places on the net, I’m lucky to get two or three Mbit.
My ISP was completely down from Sunday until this morning (Wednesday) with a busy signal. I don’t recall anything like this happening since the late 1980’s at xmas time when everyone bought their first computer.
Just more FUD blaming “copyright violators” for messing everyone else’s good times. I can think of some other examples of bandwidth eaters. Blogs that depend too much on video clip links. (Hint) Or turning every Podcast into a video Podcast, when the audio only format does just fine. And it doesn’t need to be 128kbps for a talk show! I listen to 32 & 16kbps podcasts all the time. What really eats bandwidth, are all those with broadband connections, that simply know that now they can suck down more, and do. I quess the broadband providers aren’t putting any of their profit into widening the backbones to handle the higher content demand. So it’s the fault of the Telcoms for “overbooking” the Internet. What content is being sucked down is irrelevant. Don’t shoot the messenger, shoot the lame horse he rode in on. Wow, I’m hot today!
From the article: it’s not about the dark fiber in trunk lines. The real problem is the connection between the fiber and the home:
“The concern is not that the Internet’s core optical backbone, or trunk lines, can’t handle the extra traffic, but that there are limitations at the “edge” of the Web where service providers, including telephone and cable operators, deploy switching equipment and networks of broadband “pipes” that connect to homes and businesses.
…
“There is much discussion in the North American industry about what to do about the infamous “last mile,” or the part of the network that extends from service providers’ switching equipment to tens of thousands of homes within a given service area.
“Since few homes are connected directly to high-bandwidth fiber optic lines, but have aging copper telephone wires or cable lines, there’s a limit to how much Internet capacity can be delivered to customers alongside other services, creating an Internet bottleneck.”
That’s right: the bottleneck is neighborhood cable or DSL. The engineer that can fix this bottleneck at a reasonable price will be very well off indeed. I’ve heard that other countries with newer cable systems don’t have this problem, because they have fiber right up to the house.
They’er are trying to milk the enduser into paying more to secure the needed access to the internet. There is plenty of bandwidth, dont let them fool ya!
I remember reading blurbs about “dark fiber” two or three years ago, before all this crap about illegal downloading, copyright infringement and suing music fans became the drumbeat the MAFIAA’s and the service providers started marching to. They want to strangle OUR access to bandwidth, so that there will be plenty of it left for them to sell us on demand music, videos, movies and news when they finally get off their ass and bring this country in to the 21st Century by fibering that so-called “Last Mile” What they want is to charge us for every listen or view of any thing that comes over the network that our taxes helped pay for. And Fair Use? HAH! Stallman is absolutely right about these greedy, soulless ratbastards.