Slashdot Log In
ARPANet Co-Founder Predicts An Internet Crisis
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Oct 25, 2007 12:11 PM
from the everyone-is-looking-for-their-cut dept.
from the everyone-is-looking-for-their-cut dept.
The Insultant writes "Dr. Larry Roberts, co-founder of the ARPANET and inventor of packet switching, predicts the Internet is headed for a major crisis in an article published on the Internet Evolution web site today. Internet traffic is now growing much more quickly than the rate at which router cost is decreasing, Roberts says. At current growth levels, the cost of deploying Internet capacity to handle new services like social networking, gaming, video, VOIP, and digital entertainment will double every three years, he predicts, creating an economic crisis. Of course, Roberts has an agenda. He's now CEO of Anagran Inc., which makes a technology called flow-based routing that, Roberts claims, will solve all of the world's routing problems in one go."
Related Stories
Submission: Dr. Larry Roberts Predicts Internet Crisis by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Of course, he has an agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
Cure-All Seed? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Seed? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Of course, he has an agenda (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Of course, he has an agenda (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Of course, he has an agenda (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
News Just In (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, not buyin it. A similar thing happened with electricity, when everyone bought TVs everyone bought computers etc. suddenly of course power usage sky rocketed, and lots of people said, well this is going to be the rate of growth now. Of course, with that, as it is with this, everyone go their TVs and then the demand levelled out, with this, everyone will start downloading videos, and the bandwith usage will level out. Yes, soon we'll need some new routers, but the problem isn't permanent, and it isn't something that we should trust a salesman to deal with.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey! (Score:5, Interesting)
People have been predicting that we'd run out of item X by time Y for hundreds of years. The reason we don't is because (as you said) when supply dwindles, there is incentive to find news supplies and substitutes.
During WWII, it was thought that we'd completely run out of rubber, and this would kill our war effort, due to lack of tires, hoses, gaskets, etc. Along comes synthetic rubber, and magically we don't run out. These days most rubber is synthetic.
This stuff happens all the time. When oil becomes expensive enough, alternative fuel use will become so desirable that an efficient solution will present itself. Hell, that's why we switched to cars in the first place, because our previous transportation (horses) produced untold...uhh..."pollution". A little Co2 seemed like heaven compared to mountains of horse crap, and it didn't take long before cars needed less maintenance than horses.
There was a time, however, when the car was a choice only the rich could afford, one less reliable and less efficient than a good horse. Economics rarely gets the solution ahead of the problem, which is why it's an uphill battle to force people to switch to alternatives when the alternatives aren't as efficient as what they're already using.
The biggest issue right now is that the government is mucking with the damn problem by subsidizing industries to artificially make petroleum/cars seem more efficient than they actually are. For a bunch of "free market economists" they sure love to give away money to un-free the market. They're also dropping the ball by shouldering the pollution costs created by the fossil fuel industry, instead of passing it back to the industry in the form of taxes and fees. Take away the subsidies and fairly apply the costs to the industry that created them, and you'd see a much broader adoption of alternatives as the prices rose to reflect the "real" costs.
China is a good example of this right now...They're polluting like mad, and passing the costs of that on to their citizens so that they can be super-competitive in the global market against people who have to actually pay some of those costs. It's going to catch up with them in a big way...It's like their propping up our currency. The more the dollar deflates, the more money China dumps down the drain trying to keep the dollar high, at the same time trying to keep their own money as depressed as possible.
As the dollar deflates past a certain point, American goods will become "cheaper" and Chinese goods more expensive, leading to a local manufacturing resurgence, yadda yadda, whereas when the Chinese lose hold of their own money, they're going to have this explosion of costs internally, as well as having to watch their goods become much less competitive globally.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. It means becoming more efficient and drilling in places like ANWR.
Now, stick with the topic.
As demand for bandwidth grows, so will the supply. It's that whole supply and demand argument we learned about in Eco101.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
By the way, have you all seen the "Cat wake-up call" [youtube.com] animation on youtube?
I wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
We've heard this before... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Some people at least thought he knew what he was talking about and, well, they had good reason to. I will say that I thought his comment was wrong-headed and stupid, but, then again, what do I know? I'm just some random guy on Slashdot.
Scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
As the demand rises, people leap to fill it. When Metcalf decided we were going to run out of switching capacity, he was looking at current manufacturing capacity, and a projected increase in demand, and he was sure that capacity could never keep up with demand.
What he didn't see is a horde of people looking for ways to make money, who were looking at the same numbers and thinking, "Holy crap! If I make switches I'll be RICH!" Demand drives supply, not the other way around.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, at some point, if the malware didn't succeed, it wouldn't be written.
OTOH, if we had some way to enforce cleaning up hosts that spewed malware, that would get rid of it also.
Comcast, you listening? How about filtering Storm and a few, just a few, of the well-known trojans and worms that infest the Internet? Starting with your own subscribers, residential AND commercial.
If spam and malware are bandwidth threats, maybe THAT
That's the way you do business. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, the first step is that these guys need to really convince everyone that the internet is about to implode and that the companies who need the enormous bandwidth and services simply can't or won't make the hardware investment that is necessary.
The real threat to the internet are the legislators and lobbyists who want to nerf the internet so that the only use for it is the commercial enterprises and everything should be nerfed down to a Disney-fied toddler's level. That's an actual legitimate threat.
However, maybe he should peddle the "piracy and torrents are killing the internet and I can save you!" angle. Might work.
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice Formula (Score:3, Funny)
2. Develop and market a product that fixes the sky
3. ?
4. Profit!
He must have read Chicken Little.
Re:Nice Formula (Score:5, Insightful)
This would make more sense if step 3 was actually a mystery. I thought step 3 was obvious: "Convince influential idiots with money that your product is the greatest and most urgently needed thing since free porn."
Parent
"Dark fiber"? (Score:5, Insightful)
And how much of the routing problems stem from backbone ISPs (Comcast, Verizon, etc.; see recent
Re: (Score:2)
The real internet crisis (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Packet switching was invented by Paul Baran (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
What is the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not quite. They will only invest in infrastructure if they think the return on that investment will at a bare minimum keep the same level of profit, and likely only if it will increase their profit.
Companies don't increase their capacity because cost goes up, they increase capacity because by doing so they can increase or maintain profits.
The notion that increased revenue increases capacity only works when the markets are free enou
I Doubt It (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. Yet it's important to keep in mind that part of "the Internet keeping up" is that the users modify their usage according to what technology allows. Now that it is possible to download video relatively quickly, people are doing it. But trying to stream high-def wouldn't work (either you'd have to wait a really long time to buffer or the video would stutter), so people basic
Just a question (Score:2)
Supply and Demand, Anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
The traffic will only increase dramatically if people continue to use the services that demand the traffic, and pay for the bandwidth they need to do it.
Didn't we see this article a few weeks ago? (Score:2)
I think this is a dup. This is the virtual circuit guy again, isn't it?
OH NOEZ! (Score:2)
uh. Of Warcraft. [wikipedia.org]
This is about "managing" unwanted traffic... (Score:2)
This is not at all about circuit switching, or routing more efficiently. This about tracking connections through the router so that they can apply policy based on a simple lookup, rather than examining each packet. If they didn't intend to muck with the packets, a "dumb" router is perfectly fine.
Dear Dr. Roberts (Score:3, Funny)
We will do quite OK without you meddling with our open standards.
We only need linux, an open TCP stack, and anything that happens I am sure we can handle it with JUST those tools.
Well, that and an army of a million penguin volunteers.
We will do fine, really.
Please peddle your proprietary CRAP OLA somewhere else.
Thank you.
-Hack
Wassup Doc? (Score:2)
(rolls eyes)
What did Anagran pay Slashdot for this posting?
An anagram (barely) of Anagran is "A nag ran"
Oh No! (Score:2)
The imminent death of the internet has been predicted too many times now, but it hasn't happened yet.
The real killer will be the one we don't see.
And anyway - the bandwidth limit will always limit the services available at any time. If a service uses too much noone will use it.
Bullshit (Score:2)
Different website, same message, same bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
You have officially crossed into the JonKatz zone. Not only do you post duplicates, but you post slanted slashvertisment duplicates! Your articles are worthless.
It's too bad all I can do is ignore you, but it's about time I finally did. I recommend everyone else do the same, so we can finally hit home that bullshit editors will not be tolerated.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All of this looks to be enhancements and accelerations to QOS. It could be really cool,
Similar. (Score:3, Informative)
Flow-based routing attempts to identify flows of packets - TCP connections, related streams of UDP packets, etc. - and cache information about them. Then when future packets of the flow arrive and are successfully identified they can be handled using the cached information, rather than performing a full lookup of routing, QoS labeling, permission checking, etc.
It may also attempt to identify more things about it - such as what kind of tr