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Does the Internet Need a Major Capacity Upgrade?

wiggles writes "According to the Chicago Tribune, the recent surge of video sites such as Youtube and Google video are pushing the limits of the Internet's bandwidth, or soon will be. Pieter Poll, chief technology officer at Qwest Communications, says that traffic volumes are growing faster than computing power, meaning that engineers can no longer count on newer, faster computers to keep ahead of their capacity demands. Further, a recent report from Deloitte Consulting raised the possibility that 2007 would see Internet demand exceed capacity. Admittedly, this seems a bit sensationalist, but are we headed for a massive slowdown of the whole internet?"

4 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No, you can always buy bandwidth by Threni · · Score: 2, Funny

    > agreed...I pitty all the 56kers still out there

    I laugh in their cheapskate faces! Sometimes I download stuff I don't need, just to further their misery.

  2. Don't we just need a little Drano? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    > meaning that engineers can no longer count on newer, faster computers to
    > keep ahead of their capacity demands.

    A wise man once said that the Internet was not a dump truck, but that it was in fact a series of tubes.

    Just pour some drano in there. Start with your local phone or cable box by your house or apartment. The sparks and smoke are just the internet cleaning itself. Presto: more bandwidth.

    (Disclaimer: do not do what is suggested above. The person referenced also isn't a wiseman, fortunately...)

  3. Ok, so in layman's terms... by Bananatree3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The internet is essentially one giant stadium, and computers are the toilets in this stadium. When all the toilets go flush! at the same time, the sewage pipes inside the stadium walls cant handle it, and so they burst.

    1. Re:Ok, so in layman's terms... by multipartmixed · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, not pipes. The internet is not like sewage pipes. It's more like... a bunch of TUBES.

      Why, just last week, my staff flushed an internet, and I only got it, I got it yesterday. And I still haven't figured out who this "tub girl" is supposed to be.

      --

      Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?