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Study Warns of Internet Brownouts By 2010
Bergkamp10 writes "Consumer and corporate use of the Internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, according to a new study. A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Net by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to US $137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study by Nemertes Research Group. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said. Quoting from the study: 'Our findings indicate that although core fiber and switching/routing resources will scale nicely to support virtually any conceivable user demand, Internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will likely cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years.' Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year."
it will take care of itself eventually, demand for bandwidth will increase and money will be poured into infrastructure
A while back I read about different options for internet communications protocols that were much more efficient than the current protocols. I think the early research showed you could get a HUGE scale-up in data transmission rates using conventional hardware if the protocol was altered. That was several years ago and the same protocols are still being used. Getting a large number of vendors/users/software/etc. to change off of an inefficient protocol for a better one is very difficult, but maybe it's less expensive than upgrading the worldwide internet? I wonder how much bandwidth we'd get back if spam was stopped somehow. Hmm.
Then why do i get yelled at if i use my puny 10 mb download that my ISP advertises?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I don't know if I'm trolling or joking or what, but I'm in the unfortunate position of saying: If people start seeing brownouts because there's too much video on the 'net, I'll happily switch to a service that throttles the heck out of your content as long as I can still use my low-bandwidth telnet stuff. Does that mean I'm supporting or opposing network neutrality? I don't even know anymore.
1. For Net users in the Americas and Europe, it would be fairly easy to establish bridge portals to not include Africa and Asia and solve the whole problem.
2. For Net users beyond the Americas and Europe, going to IPv6 would solve this problem - and installing throttle content managers to bridge the gap.
3. Just because you can link all devices to the Net, doesn't mean you have to.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
To help decrease usage, we should implement a licensing system to own and operate a PC. You would be put through two or three week long course that explains the basic functionality of the machine, as well as how to protect yourself while online (from viruses, not sexual predators!). Registration fees would mostly go toward the nationalized (though publicly run) servers and broadband-for-all initiative.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
"Pfft that's atleast 10 years away"
But it isn't. I am now old. I'll be at the bar, don't come looking for me.
... your local monopoly telco. I wouldn't be surprised if Verizon, AA&T and their ilk paid for this study so they could go cry to congress about needing more subsidies so the internet doesn't "brownout".
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
What about all the dark fiber that's already there? There's plenty to go around. They'll just have to activate the infrastructure that they already have instead of building new infrastructure.
"Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year."
"New"? I haven't seen anything remotely "new" on the internet in years.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/breaking_news_all_online_data
http://mr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12356.html
From an article in discover magazine:
John Doyle is worried about the Internet. In the next few years, millions more people will gain access to it, and existing users will place ever higher demands on our digital infrastructure, driven by applications like online movie services and Internet telephony. Doyle predicts that this skyrocketing traffic could cause the Internet to slow to a disastrous crawl, an endless digital gridlock stifling our economies. But Doyle, a professor of control and dynamic systems, electrical engineering, and bioengineering at Caltech, also believes the Internet can be saved. He and his colleagues have created a theory that has revealed some simple yet powerful ways to accelerate the flow of information. Vastly accelerate the flow: Doyle and his colleagues can now blast the entire text of all the books in the library of Congress across the United States in 15 minutes.
I haven't actually read the whole article in a while but from what it seems, this guy has a pretty good solution to this whole problem that I don't see discussed a lot.
Here, fixed it for you.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's not necessarily the raw Internet capacity that has to increase. New video and audio compression algorithms could dramatically reduce the bandwidth necessary for carrying the same. Protocols like BitTorrent naturally transfer most of the data through currently uncongested connections. Development and even implementation of such standards does not necessarily cost billions of dollars.
Now it's granted that we'll probably come up with some new and creative ways to use up the bandwidth such as realtime 3D video-conferencing.
The most glaring one I can remember was on the morning of September 11, 2001, but its not the only one that has occurred, and undoubtedly won't be the last. Also, the same thing happens with any other limited communications service (POTS systems can be -- and have been -- overloaded during major events!), and with (and where we get the name) electrical grids.
So, yeah, by 2010, internet brownouts "might" happen. They already do happen. And we all survive.
Aside from pushing a meaningles scary buzzword ("exaflood"), this is an unsurprising study by a largely telecom-industry-funded lobbying group favoring tiered internet services and other telecom-friendly policy that, surprise of surprises, finds that with the current, mostly-neutral internet, the whole system is about to collapse, and it will be used to sell the idea that we have to abandon that model, let telecoms charge additional fees to get data delivered even though they already charge each end for every byte transferred, etc.
Bet you 10 slashbucks if you do some research behind where this study came from, it is companies who claim to have the fix for this.
I highly doubt the Internet is headed for a meltdown because, funny thing, as usage grows so does available bandwidth. Turns out that we can activate more fibre connections, we can upgrade to new, faster technologies, etc. I'm quite sure the Internet of 1997 would have ground to a near total halt were it subjected to today's traffic. However turns out we aren't dealing with that Internet, ours is faster, better.
I also hate when people throw out bullshit numbers of how much something will cost to fix. Ok well that might be impressive assuming we weren't spending anything now. But we are. Companies are investing in new infrastructure all the time (I know we are where I work). If it is insufficient, ok, but let's not pretend that there is no development going on and all of a sudden we have to find a big wodge of cash.
If it comes down to it, and there's more demand than supply and supply is too expensive to grow based on current pricing know what happens? No not a melt down, but that magic shit you learned back in Econ 200: Prices will rise such that demand will match supply. Of course those rising prices will give more money to upgrade supply and so on.
In reality I imagine things will go just fine. As far as I can tell bandwidth is getting cheaper at the high end, and supply is mostly limited by demand. As there's more demand for it, the infrastructure necessary for it will be purchased.
The actual report isThe Internet Singularity, Delayed: Why Limits in Internet Capacity Will Stifle Innovation on the Web, free registration for a PDF download.
Abolish net neutrality!
That'll fix OUR little red wagon for getting online!
What steals the capacity? Spam. Why should I spend my millions building capacity when it is then consumed by spammers?
When word gets out that a few spammers are doing 30 years hard time the capacity needs issue will resolve itself.
I must admit, my BS detector went off when I heard of this study. In my experience. the Internet backbones tend to be in the best shape, even in the US, and the most straightforward to extend. Our troubles tend to be on the edge.
While, I cannot find any real problems in a quick read, people should look at FIGURE 7: GLOBAL INCREMENTAL OPTICAL INVESTMENT, where the investment peaks in 2008 after exponential growth in both spending, capacity and use. It is not too surprising that a couple of years of exponential growth in usage later, and with flat spending, they predict problems. The real question to me is, how realistic is that that investment will peak next year ? I must admit that this sounds dubious to me.
REPENT! REPENT! The end is nigh!! REPENT!
We're going to run out of bits! It's peak oil^H^H^H bits! AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Women and pr0n to the lifeboats!!!!!! AAAAHHHHH!
Unfortunately, it is a fraction (around 25%) of what we spend on other things.
Some of the points made in this report seem to eerily echo the talking points of the big comm companies against neutrality, and for allowing them to tier pricing.
If you recall they said in the past that video is using up a substantial percentage of the bandwidth and that unless they can charge the big users more (ie Google, Youtube, etc) that they won't be able to upgrade the infrastructure to keep up.
that in the future, all problems will be solved by the people of the future!
The collapse of the infrastructure is like the end of Moore's Law--always a couple years over the horizon.
As a general practice, I ignore any news story that relies upon "could", "may", "might" or "possibly" in its central premise. It always means that another lazy journalist is being willingly spoonfed a story by a PR flack.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Well telcos, I guess you have to upgrade the network now like you promised for the tax cuts clinton gave you between 1996 and 2000! What was it? 200 billion?
This is the telcos fault, screw them.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year."
160 of which will be porn.
I remember this exact same story ten years ago when internet phones were just hitting the market. Agreed - more alarmist bs.
You have plenty of reasons to live...one would assume.
Begone and take your IE with you.
US $137 billion. how much is that in hard currency, like 500 Euros?
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
"Imminent Death of the Net" has been a joke since the 80's: "it'll take more than a day to transfer a day's worth of USENET with 1200 bps modems!", then 2400 baud modems came out, etc. The more things change, the more they stay the same... Fortunately, data transmission is a highly parallelizable operation, and if people want to pay for it, they'll get it...
Who do I think has the stock pile of unused bandwidth capabilities and the funds / know-how on coming up with some alternative last-mile options? My end of year 2007 prediction: Google comes out with a flying blimp last mile wireless option. They may even be in line to have a chunk of the wireless spectrum, who knows? :) Currently I'm paying $55 for a wireless 10Mbit (synchronous) option that runs in the 5Ghz range (and yes, +900K/sec is the norm). What if Google comes along and can offer $80 45Mbit capabilities? -SOLD- They could also offer 10Mbit for $35, 5Mbit for $19.95, and what-not.
:)
Mental note: buy more goog (and to clarify: I do already own personally and independently purchased Google stock. Not a lot. Some... Buy if you want, sell if you must. I do not work for Google.
FUD
I am sure there is a lot of poor equipment that needs to be upgraded, but otherwise this sounds more like ISP crying that they need more revenue.
/Mb for the core. Factoring 5 year lifetime on equipment you end up with $4/user/month for 50Mb/s.
Backbone fiber: the fiber cables contain 768 non-dispersion shifted cable. This, and the last mile, is the big and expensive part of the network. Each of these fibers can, with end equipment upgrade, carry at least 10Gb * 135 colors = 1.35Tb, so the cable carries 1Eb/s.
Now, an x264 encoded HD video is 50mb/s, so this cable will carry 20 million HD channels.
(So one cable covers northern california. There are at least three)
A 40GB edge router can support about 1k users, and costs $10k. Thats $100/user. Estimate the same cost
My house is already connected with fiber(GB Ethernet choked down to a few Mb/s) , and you can probably (soon) get 50Mb/s over DSL, so the last mile cost is at least incremental, and probably similar to the above estimate of $4, so the urban part of us should get it for $8 + ISP profit and administrative cost.
So $10/month for 50Mb/s should be the cost to support this upgrade.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Well that's seemed pretty obvious browsing various sites and using various services because....
oo, hang on actually, I was about to say they all seem so slow, oversubscribed, but these days you have to flip a coin to try and decide if a site or service is flooded out, or you're just being crippled by your own ISP.
Either way things really aren't looking too good are they.
I really don't need to point this out.. The Internet is a single entity as much as it is a big truck that you just dump something on. You do not simply put $150 billion into "The Internet" and rewire it. Here's how it always has and always will go down: 1: Server X is created using inexpensive technology 2: Time passes 3: Server X gains popularity/encounters increased bandwidth demand 4: Server X purchases expensive/modern technology 5: Server X meets bandwidth demand GOTO 2 Now, I can see that if some really bored nutsack thought it would be cool to sit down and project the total amount of money that will be poured into the purchase of fibre optic cable and spankin' new servers over the next 3 years in order to meet the projected bandwidth demands, they might come up with a global figure of $150 bil. But there is no one entity that will foot that bill. There is no one infrastructure that will receive that one massive upgrade. Newgrounds will probably buy another server, but Homestar Runner seems to work fine. Amazon and Ebay may want to grab another, maybe Tripod will see an explosion of growth. Little by little it'll add up, and hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of (relatively) tiny systems will be upgraded with the passing of time to meet the gradually increasing bandwidth demand. To say that the Internet is going to brownout at any time in the near future is like saying that the world is going to run out of hard drive space because everyone's personal computers and laptops are downloading an increasing amount of porn. It then goes on to assume that one person is going to buy new computers for everyone en masse with one massive check at one single point in time. While I would love to get a new laptop and have some disgustingly rich schmuck foot the bill, it's simply not going to happen like that.
This is worse than the tragedy of the commons because at least (most) farmers understand the downside of over-grazing.
Consumption will continue to increase until there is ssome sort of cost that caps consumption and effects a feedback cycle. That feedback also needs to be something that Joe Sixpack can understand. You and I might know that youtube uses less bandwidth than full DVD quality video, but Joe Sixpack doesn't. Therefore it is going to be very difficult to use cost to temper usage.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
this seems a bit steep! With 6 billion people in the world, this is >25 GB for every man, woman and child on the planet. Per year! I doubt the average is even close to that.
Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year, and this exaflood is a positive development for Internet users and businesses, IIA says. An exabyte is 1 quintillion bytes or about 1.1 billion gigabytes. One exabyte is the equivalent of about 50,000 years of DVD quality video.
So, 70.5E9 Hours of video? So, 1 billion people each created 70.5 hours of video worth of data? That's pretty impressive, to the extent that I question the 161 Exabyte figure for internet users. If they include scientific data collection, I'd buy that number, but that doesn't effect our internet; have their own internet, internet 2. Anyone else have a way to explain the data creation figure they quote?
Today is all we really have. We should all live it well: it is our stepping stone to all of our tomorrows.
As many of the comments point out, this is a question mainly of supply and demand.
It seems there are already fibre cables that can be activated at need, and this seems to be the case in Stockholm at the moment.
About a year ago, BBB (bredbandsbolaget, literally the broadband company) upgraded all of their customers from 10 to 100mbit.
It was reported in the newspaper the other day that BBB will now be offering 1GBPS, and it suggested that the technology and capability has been around for quite some time, but that they did not feel the market was mature enough for it to be economically viable - no demand - high supply = high price per unit to meet economies of scale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale).
Theyre starting off slow, last week two apartment buildings were connected to try it, and they say it plans to be implemented fully by 2010.
Im _really_ not an expert in the area, but a lot of users point out theoretical scenarios that illustrate that when the demand arrives, more broadband will be rolled out.
This seems to be exactly whats happening in Sweden.
Just kill youtube and google video, the problem is solved already. The kind of shit on these two sites isn't worth anyone's time.
Much of the issue is likely invented by operators who want to own more of the pie and feel little responsibility to reducing their ROI by switching dark fiber on. Also the term "brownout" is cute since obviously there is no such thing, you get collisions and throttling but the routers don't explode usually.
However I am curious about how much bandwidth is eaten by:
- Spam
- Advertising
- Zombie communications and DDoS
Also, bandwidth availability, congestion and capacity need to be examined with respect to net segment, time, directionality and efficiency. It has to be mentioned whether last mile networks or cross-country lines are what is nearing capacity, and the study should mention competitiveness to other countries compared to which the updated investment forecast is still pitiful. The market may be sufficient for some things but the network infrastructure needs to grow much faster than that, in order to support innovation and business development.
Nonsense! We only need to invest millions of dollars in forged reset packets.
I guess all that money Verizon keeps spending on FiOS doesn't count, eh?
It's disgust.
Indeed. Everyone discussed it and found it disgusting.
Sigh.
Maybe it's time for some to write The Guide To Effective Slashdot Posting: Grade-School Grammar and Spelling for Native English Speakers.
Or would that idea smack of elitism and offend some?
Then maybe I'll get some work done for a change!
I hate slashdot! This is my last post!
Can I have your loot?
There is a decent solution that doesn't violate network neutrality: an ISP could simply give each customer a data quota*, and if they exceed it, they get their bandwidth reduced.** That's a good way of reducing bittorrent and video traffic without explicitly targeting bittorrent or video.
* If this is implemented the right way, the customer should know what their [monthly|weekly|daily] quota is when they sign up for the service, and should be able to check how much they've used.
** The ISP could alternatively disconnect the customer, or charge them some "excess usage" fee, but either of those options are rather obnoxious from the customer's perspective.
If I remember correctly, companies like MCI Worldcom, Qwest, AT&T, et al. spent massive amounts of money building up the infrastructure, laying fiber optic cables everywhere they could because they believed there would be a demand for it. But it never materialized. So there should be more than enough capacity to handle future demands.
"Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year."
Amazing what pirates can do.
All we need to do is change what the year is before then, by editing it on Wikipedia. Then by the nature of Wikipedia always being the truth, we can buy ourselves some time.
Meanwhile, the kid next door gets ever more involved in on-line gaming, YouTube, and downloading p0rn. He's going to need a fatter pipe. Fine. Get mommy and daddy to pay for it. That's where the investment for the new infrastructure should come from. Likewise, if your system gets trojaned and starts pumping out batches of spam or DDoS packets, your throughput goes down and you need faster access. That's just part of the TCO of running a crap system. Don't expect me to pay for it.
Have gnu, will travel.
#sage goes in every field. also, remember to use 'Plain Old Text' next time, you failtroll
I have this box of pencils...
You nerds -- discust me!
It's disgust.
Begone and take your IE with you.
Maybe he was trying for dec_R_ust and was referring to his general levels of cleanliness...
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
37 of which are solely to display nipples.
I worked for Cisco Systems in the late 90's and through the dot-com bust. Starting in 1995, there was a MASSIVE undertaking to lay out fiber across the nation and throughout the world. When they pulled fiber, they didn't just pull one strand. Fiber is cheap, it is the manual labor that is incredibly expensive to bury the cables and hook them up, certify them, etc. When they buried the cables, they ran 128 pair, 256 pair. TO THIS DAY, we have MORE DARK FIBER than we have lit fiber. There is enough fiber spanning this planet to support a quintupling of bandwidth and we'll STILL have dark fiber to spare.
Why are they 'warning' of impending bandwidth crisis? It's pretty simple.
I was just at a customer site last week (a city government). They had a DS3 and were going to get a second one. I asked him why on earth he was getting a DS3 which is OLD telco technology. I went up to his demarc point and showed him that Qwest had a fiber cable coming into their facility that provided 100mb to the net, that they then fed into a Fujitsu FL4100, then passed it off to a DS3 mux and passed off to the customer as a copper coax connection. They had a wall filled with equipment JUST TO SLOW DOWN THE CONNECTION to a DS3 speed. Oh, and the City was paying for the electricity for all the telco equipment.
I told him to call up Qwest and tell them to come get their crap out of his server room, take the fiber and plug it directly into his switch. And he was only going to pay $2000 a month for the 100mb connection to the internet or else good luck ever getting a permit to dig up another sidewalk in this town.
It worked. He didn't even have to resort to the threats. Qwest knows that they NEED TO CREATE A PROBLEM IN ORDER TO CHARGE FOR THE SOLUTION. In 100% of the cases I've dealt with telco's, I've told them what the speed and feed was that I wanted, and what I was going to pay for it. Never have I had an issue. Now, I do live in the Twin Cities Metro Area, where there is plenty of bandwidth to go around, and I'm not demanding that they give me priority QoS all the way to their tier 1 core backbone, but this game they're playing is ridiculous.
Another customer was paying $12,000 per month to get a 200mb connection to the net. I got on the horn with Qwest and told them to give us a gig connection for $10,000 per month or they can come get their gear because we weren't going to pay for the electricity for them any more. They gave us a gig connection.
It costs $100 to provision a 10mb connection port. Heck fiber optic modules are CHEAP. Want to know how much it costs to reconfigure that link for 100mb? Same Price. It is also the same price to bring it up to a gig connection.
They will bring in equipment for the sake of bringing in equipment, they will spend tens of thousands of dollars in gear just to slow your connection down, just so they can charge to speed it up.
Don't fall for it.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Didn't the government already provide them with a steady injection of financing to boost their broadband infrastructure in the last decade or so? I seem to recall we did. And did they ever actually use that money for the intended purpose? As I recall, they did not.
This means that unless bittorent and net neutrality can not be stopped the internet will halt.
I suppose they can use that argument to throttle all internet traffic so they dont have to upgrade their networks and can make more money price gouging everyone too.
The government needs to do this and not give the damn fiber to the monopolies as many will prefer to have it dark or heavily QOS to create an artificial supply to maximize profits.
http://saveie6.com/
If Global Warming consumes the earth by 2010, we won't be around to care if the Internet suffers brownouts.
If it doesn't, then Al Gore should still be around, and can invent a new Internet.
Problem solved.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Remove all "amateur" content on youtube, say 99.99% of the Top Videos for Today, should help quite a bit. As long as I can still get "amateur" pr0n, everything is fine. Worst case scenario, HD-DVDs or Blue-Ray pr0n. Ahhh, how human civilization have progressed. Good time, good times.
If I can do it, its probably not worth doing... probably
Have no fear Comcast will save us with throttling! If every ISP used traffic shaping to slow down all but casual browsing we wouldn't have to worry about this. [/sarcasm]
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
Hey, AT&T, BellSouth, et. all, what happened to that couple hundred billion you got from the American public to upgrade the infrastructure, huh?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You can't have "Brown-Outs" on the Internets, it's TUBES Dammit!
When my work (major university that connects to backbones directly) looked for providers we got 8 bids. While at the local level there is sometimes a monopoly situation, it isn't the case for big connections. There are multiple players and they all want your business. Price isn't the only thing they compete on, but it sure as hell is a factor. I'm amazed at how much cheaper our bandwidth has gotten in the 8 years I've been watching it.
Likewise in many markets there is local competition. Here the major competition is between the cable company and the phone company's DSL, however there are also other DSL providers, and some wireless as well. I now pay less for 10mb/1mb cable that I did for 640k/640k DSL about 5 years ago.
It may not move as fast as geeks would like, and it certainly isn't fearsome competition like in the computer hardware market, but there is competition out there and it does lead to lowering of prices and increasing of speeds. Time was you couldn't even get 6mb DSL here, now they advertise it. Cable starts at 6mb, with 10 and 12 available. At this point the biggest limit I can see on the cable side is the cable speed itself. The current DOCSIS standard only allows for 1 channel for data which gets you like 40mb per segment. The segments have been built out pretty small, but they are still at the limit of what they can offer without it getting too slow. However the next DOCSIS standard will allow for multiple channels, and if they axe the analogue cable transmission, which they've started prepping to do, that's like 100 channels worth of bandwidth they've got to play with. Even just 10% for data will work real nice.
I mean, if we're going to be flooded with news articles about faeces, faeculent spam, poo-porn, slashdot articles about recycling animal waste products, then I can envisage a serious brownout. Or maybe they secretly mean the rise and rise of Ubuntu default wallpapers.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Like some posts have been saying, we have dark fiber just laying in the ground ready to be used, and google has been buying dark fiber. Looks like another cash cow for google.
non - neutral net.
Basically, profits are higher if we consumers get screwed. Given they were granted monopolies, they should deal with this problem instead of figuring out ways to not deal with it and meet "growth expectations".
Free market indeed.
Oh, and why does the post say, "corporate and consumer use" Isn't that just use?
Blogging because I can...
Over here I can link to the exchange at 8MB/Sec but the tube from there isn't big enough for the number of 8MBs they have plumbed into it.
Even if net neutrality isn't compromised, you are going to see a two-tier internet in America. From my limited knowledge of the US, most of the richest people there live in cities. Its easy rolling out the latest connections to them because lots of them live close to an exchange, and there is an incentive to finance such infrastructure because such people are likely to spend a lot of money online.
If someone is poorer, and further from an exchange/sharing it with fewer people, getting new technology out to them costs more and is going to reap less benefit for the guys with all the money and power, because the poorer you are the less money you have to spend at Amazon.
Here in Europe we are slightly more fortunate, with a denser population and poiticians who still occasionally spend money for the public good instead of just handing it out to their friends companies, but I expect we shall as always follow the US in this matter
Never forget; your government and the online sector see the Internet purely as a way for them to market to you. This whole 'global community' crap is just a side effect for them. They believe the net should only exist to communicate between corporations and desirable consumers. They dislike any kind of relation between people that does not involve themselves.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Some say the internet will end in flames,
Some say in greed.
From what I've seen of Slashdot a-holes
I hold with those who favor trolls.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of Microsoft
To say that for destruction greed
Is also great
And would suffice.
The only thing lacking is the speed of the last mile, there's tons of fibre out there waitng to be lit up.
What the parent post was speaking of is this below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fiber#Dark_fiber_overcapacity
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
One thing I think will help a bit, along with many other things, is IPV6. One thing that this protocol includes IP lists on packets, meaning one packet can have multiple destinations. This will especially help for online TV and streaming, and other services that will deliver the same content to multiple people. Also over the next 10, 20, 100000 (IPV6 should have become standard years ago) lots of places will be upgrading there infrastructure to accommodate IPV6.
Here in Sweden I don't think we will have this problem. I think the infastructure is set up quite well. I got a fiber going right into my house and for 100 Mbit/s up and down I pay about 40 bucks a month. However this is not the same for everyone. I think only newer neighborhoods have the fiber. the rest have adsl.
Life is good
Also to note. I live 20 min drive from the city.
Remember that story from a while back, with a chinese diesel-electric sub surfacing right besides a US carrier? A clear signal by the chinese that the US is a lot more vulnerable then previously thought. It was believed that with its carriers the US could project its military power pretty much anywhere, with little fear of counter-attack. (There is a flaw in this, but I will get to that)
IF China were to flex its military muscles it would want to pull a SUCCESFULL Pearl Harbour. That is, it wouldn't want to knock out the US or get dragged into a long war with the US, it would want to knock down US military capacity quickly, so it can move freely and then from a new position of strength try for peace. The idea of an ALLOUT US/China war is silly, neither side wants that and neither side has the capacity to fight such a war right now. China can't invade the US and the US can't invade China.
With this submarine, China showed the US that its military power on the oceans is not as absolute as it might think. I have no idea how much of this move was due to sloppy training and the taskforce in question being on peace duty, but in theory, if the chinese had wanted it, they could have knocked out the US carriers fleets and drastically reduced the US capabilities to interfere in Chinese operations.
This is more then just a signal to the US, it also tells countries like South-Korea, Japan, Taiwan that its US ally is not nearly as invincible as previously thought. The question these countries have to ask now is, if we offend China too much, can we count on the US to be able to protect us in time before the Chinese have overrun us? With the carriers destroyed, does the US have the capacity to stop an invasion?
Don't underestimate just how much of US military strategy in that area of the world is based on the carriers.
Offcourse, the question now becomes,why did the sub surface. It didn't have too. If China wanted to actually start a war, it would hardly want to give away the fact that it has subs this capable.
No, this was all just a loud bark. China really has no interest in invading China, just like it hasn't clamped down too much on Hong Kong (became part of China recently but is still allowed a lot of freedom compared to mainland China). It just also doesn't want to appear weak. Basically the message was,"today I let you life, tomorrow who knows". A threath, to stop Taiwan from becoming too independent, South-Korea from becoming too cocky and Japan from thinking it can become a military power again. And last but not least, to stop people in China from thinking China is weak. They seen what happened to the Soviet Union. They don't want it too happen to them.
The entire idea that China wants to invade Taiwan is flawed. It would gain nothing but a lot of trouble for it. BUT that does not mean China wants to appear weak. In a way that is part of the reason for the Iraq/Afghan war the US is in. What else could it do? Had the US not invaded it would have been a huge sign of weakness. For all the bad press the US has gotten, the message is still clear, piss them off and you will pay the price.
But you are right, the chinese don't seem to want a war, what would they gain with it? But part of not wanting a war is making sure the rest of the world knows that they are going to get an ass kicking if they start a war with you.
That is what most people forget, if you want peace, make sure the other guy knows that war is not an option because they would loose.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That's probably the right term..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Now I know why Belgium has these draconian 15GB datalimits. Those aren't a leftover from the past, our providers are actually preserving our internet for the future!
First the internet was a series of tubes.
Then the tubes were full of bees.
Now the bees are stuck in poo?
How much is $137 billion in american dollars? 150 billion?
Despite frequent attempts (often by Bob Metcalfe) to proclaim The Death Of The Internet, somehow the damn thing just keeps on surviving and expanding:
* ARPANet Co-Founder Predicts An Internet Crisis October 25th 2007
* Death of the Internet greatly exaggerated August 25 2004
* The Death Of The Internet November 4 2002
* Predicting the Death of the Internet May 18 2001
* Internet still collapsing, Metcalfe says July 7 1997
I'd like to suggest a new anti-Internet-death-meme: the Internet is a giant collection of cockroaches. You can step on as many as you want with your HD video torrents, it just keeps on multiplying and scurrying around anyway.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Why is this date always three years off? I remember reading the exact same scare article in 1994, 1999, and 2003. Every time the "death of internet" was always publication date +3 years.
Do you really think we are that fucking stupid?
why increase capacity when you can just cap connections?
STOP BLOGGING!!! NOW!
First, I'll admit that I didn't read the article, but I think I have the general idea. But even if the internet reaches some bandwidth critical mass on the hardware scale, it won't cause a huge permanent slowdown. If things start to get out of hand, software solutions are going to start popping up. Better compresion, smarter routing, better bandwidth management, etc. I see it like this....Let's say Netflix has HD video on demand, the files are whatever size 40gB or whatever. Billy decides to watch one of the HD movies, and 40gB are then transferred to him. He gets full hi-def, and he's happy. Well, then there's a bandwidth cruch. Billy can't get his full hi-def video as easily, so he gets mad and leaves Netflix. So the Netflix guys decide that they need to cram the video into a smaller size. The come up with some compression that gets 99% of the quality at 90% of the size. Also, they decide that instead though the movie has English, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Yiddish audio availible, they only send one audio track at a time. And subtitles, they decide not to transmit the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Farsi, and Sanskrit unless requested. Suddenly, that 40gB file has been reduced to 30, 99% hi-def is back and easily accessible, and Billy is back. Everybody is happy! And that's just PC/Server stuff. Think about new routing protocols, and the work that can be done within the IPv6 setup. Sure, there are costs to developing software, but software is part of the solution that some of the FUD guys want to ignore.
In related news, fear mongering centered around bandwidth shortcomings appears to already be prevalent. Gives me that warm fuzzy feeling, reading this.
If I remember correctly, weren't the Telcos given large tax breaks (to the tune of over $200 Billion) to ramp up access to the internet in the US?
Nemertes Research is funded by the Internet Innovation Alliance which as an underwritten "Astrtoturf" group of AT&T. Can we trust this report? http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2007/11/20/suckered-by-astroturf/
It's these darn kids clogging up our Internet with their garbage YouTube videos and their crappy MySpace pages with 5 million songs and videos playing at once on them and their loads of crappy prom pictures on Flickr. If those darn kids would just stay offa my Internet lawn there'd be plenty of bandwidth for me!
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
The underlying fiber's there, and companies are pumping bazillions into fiber optic "last mile" solutions already. I second the belief that this article is FUD.
Just some time ago there was an article about what a shame it was that so much wire laid dormant... is it all used up now? Even if it is, they can simply lay more wires. I call FUD.
Isn't this the same trick Enron and Co. used to use? Can't get regulators to loosen price controls (access controls in the net case)? No problem, create a capacity shortage, and blame the regulations/regulators. Anyone else see this as obvious?
http://www.unfocus.com/
...we will be running our own parallel mash Internet. Universities will be on it too and so will the military.
I don't see why we should cry over some jerks who killed the old Internet...
> Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year."
I seriously doubt that 10^18/10^9 = 10^9. Every Internet user "creates" 1Gb of data?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can find myself voting for Obama in Novemeber of 2008 here in Houston, Texas, but I will not vote for another Bush or Clinton in November 2008! They never fooled me! I never voted for a Clinton or Bush since I came back from Zurich, Switzerland in 1992. I voted for Libertarian Party Candidate Harry Browne the first election I came back for. I voted for Nader/Camejo in 2004. I also voted for Nader in 2000. I believe that if the Repulican and Democratic Parties don't shape up, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich could form the strongest 3rd Bipartisian Presidential Ticket in our lifetimes!!! Ron Paul Revolution '08 www.mayorgalvan.com www.ronpaulradio.com www.voteronpaul.com
The time has come to galvanize! www.galvan.org
How 1996: which is when Bob Metcalfe made the same prediction in a widely publicized column. Metcalfe promised to eat his words if it didn't come true, and at the conference he ran in early 1997, his column was ground up into paste and he did exactly that.
wg
if you do not increase the size of the pipe to the backbone. And I am not just talking about fiber to the home, the ISPs need to increase bandwidth capacity to the backbone or wherever they purchase their bandwidth from.
This sounds to me like the media warming us up to another big telco subsidy by the federal gov't.... remember this?
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html
From the FA: (fine article)
Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of service to customers. That's $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it.
Its like deja vu all over again!