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."

Comments

Bandwidth "brownouts" are nothing new

[DragonWriter]

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.

Actual link to the report.

[argent]

The actual report isThe Internet Singularity, Delayed: Why Limits in Internet Capacity Will Stifle Innovation on the Web, free registration for a PDF download.

Re:Just throttle the biggest content--Oh, wait.

[WK2]

Does that mean I'm supporting or opposing network neutrality?

Neither. You support QOS. QOS is throttling based on protocol/bandwidth/latency needs. Neutrality is under attack when ISP's throttle or block based on content/source. Sometimes the line between QOS and Neutrality is blurry, but your example is clearly QOS.

Re:yay free market

[Foobar of Borg]

Remember when oil production "peaked" in the 1970's? How many times will we have "peak oil"?

No, I don't actually. There was an energy crisis starting in the Nixon Administration (I always wondered why Carter is blamed for that), but there was no oil "peak". The energy crisis was based on the Arabian Oil Embargo, which artificially created conditions similar to what is projected for peak oil production. When peak oil production is discussed today, they are talking about all the oil that is produced everywhere.