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International Internet Infrastructure Triples
bda writes: "TeleGeography has just published this year's statistics for international Internet infrastructure growth, aka how much capacity goes where. Worldwide, Internet bandwidth nearly tripled (174 percent growth), but behind it are some pretty big differences -- growth ranged from 90 percent (less than doubling) for Africa to 479 percent (almost sextupling) for Latin America. City-wise, the top interregional hubs connecting between continents were New York, London, Amsterdam, Paris, SF, Tokyo, Washington DC, Miami, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, in that order. So the Internet is still fairly U.S.-centric ... but still becoming less so. Asia-Pac's ratio of out-of-region to in-region international capacity went from 7:1 to 4:1; Lat Am's from 36:1 to 7:1. The most obvious factor in long-haul Internet bandwidth growth seems to be whether or not someone has plunged ahead and laid dark fiber. When we looked at trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific capacity, Internet capacity stayed pretty constant at 10 percent of what was theoretically possible over lit fiber." You can read the executive summary (pdf), or you can (gulp) pay $1,995 for the whole thing. That would work out to about 50 copies of the Atlas of Cyberspace.
Iraq has Internet, but only for the military. It is illegal to even own a modem in Iraq. Faxes, copiers, typewriters, etc. have to be registered. Satellite dishes are banned, although people do assemble and camouflage them. Foreign magazines coming into the country are censored, often arriving with certain pages torn out. The government keeps very tight control of any news coming into the country. The internet would be harder to control, so it is banned. Saddam recently declared that the internet is a sinister tool used by governments for brainwashing people and spreading pornography.
Nizar Hamdoun, Iraq's retiring UN ambassador, in a recent interview, said that when he returns to Iraq, he will try to open internet access to the country. He thinks the internet is very useful, and would like Iraqi kids to enjoy the benefits. Hamdoun designed the Iraqi UN mission's web site.
Iraq has international telephone access, which is also often monitored. The network was targeted and damaged during the Gulf War and the recent bombing. So service is sporadic.
I want to know if all this extra bandwidthis being paid for or whether internationally the cost of internet bandwidth is dropping. Here in australia with the internet backbone provided by only to main companies we are still charged fairly restrictive bandwidth prices.
I currently have a permament 28.8kbs connection charged at AU18c a Mb. With the advent of a PPPoE switched network in our city it was meant to herald a new age of connectivity with streaming movies and megabandwidth available. Shure it may be available but they are charging pretty similar rates per meg to my current modem connection. Meaning I could run up a AU$500 bill in a matter of minutes downloading the debian iso's for example.
Shouldn't the increse of available bandwidth decrease the cost to the consumers?
The fact that the infrastructure has gotten so big and so few of the truly UN-connected (i.e. non western countries, disadvantaged schools) have gotten connected in the meantime makes me relegate this infrastructure expansion to the trash bin with the dutch tulip craze.
An investment craze, a gold rush, call it whatever you want. What it means is that people have expanded infrastructure in a way that does not prove sustainable in the long run because it doesn't reach everybody.
Cars have penetrated nearly everywhere. Even cities whejre most people don't have cars gain benefits from cars and a car infrastructure. The same thing cannot be said for the Internet infrastructure.
Until the Bruce Sterling world exists and we have a self maintained system of multiple Nets and self-made, semi disposable computers for nearly everybody (including the poor and nomadic people in the world), then we won't have a useful Internet that will last beyond its gold rush period.
It has to become like the car. People said the car wouldn't penetrate certain levels of society either you know.
Goat sex free since 2001
Ever since reading Edward Tufte's books on visualization of data, I've looked at graphs, charts, and diagrams such as those in this report with a much more critical eye. It really bothers me that people get away with distorting data so terribly. For example, take a look at that first chart of "Interregional Internet Bandwidth". The numbers seem to have almost nothing to do with how they displayed the data, aside from the general correlation between thickness of the line and the size of the number. Your eye is tricked into comparing the areas of some of the lines because of how absurdly thick the US / Europe one is. And the spread of data makes it impossible for the vague correlation of data to be meaningful. There's no way that Latin America / Europe line is 1/2000 of the thickness of the US / Europe line. It bothers me that "executives" will be making decisions based on poor data displays like this.
Steven N. Severinghaus
One diagram shows the asia pacific region as having only 41.8 gbs to USA. Where's the 240 gbs between NZ and USA gone to?
If you had 100 "units" of bandwidth, and you then had 174 percent of them the next year, you'd have 174 "units" of bandwidth. Which is not triple.
If you had 100 "uints" of bandwidth and you the ADDED 174 percent of that capacity (I guess they mean in this case that "growth == new", which is not clear), you would have 274 "units",which is not near triple either... it's closer to two and a half times... but I'm sure the folks who are exited enough to write about it want it to be triple.
You can also do the "shampoo" statistics. Take a 12 oz. bottle of shampoo. Make it into an 18oz bottle. It's now "50% bigger"... unless you do the math from the other side, in which case it's only 33% bigger.
I fergit who said it, but they were right: "There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics."
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001