ARPANet Co-Founder Predicts An Internet Crisis 152
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."
Of course, he has an agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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)
"Dark fiber"? (Score:5, Insightful)
And how much of the routing problems stem from backbone ISPs (Comcast, Verizon, etc.; see recent
No crisis, just business as usual (Score:1, Insightful)
What is the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
I Doubt It (Score:3, Insightful)
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."
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.
Re:What is the problem? (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 enough for newcomers to enter the market. Things like utilities and oil and medicine don't work that way, because the cost of entry to new competitors is very high. This means that there is a significant level of price increases that turn into pure profit with zero increase in capacity; until the increased price can overcome the cost of entry or the demand changes, no additional capacity will be created unless dictated by some external agency.
So until the price of current services hits the level at which it will be affordable for a competitor to enter the market to add capacity, or governing agencies lower the cost of entry to the market, supply can be artificially restricted even without monopoly behavior.
Re:We've heard this before... (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.
Re:News Just In (Score:2, Insightful)
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:The old packet vs circuit argument? (Score:3, Insightful)
All of this looks to be enhancements and accelerations to QOS. It could be really cool, or highly evil as well, since these boxes would be perfect for retarding P2P traffic without actually blocking it on backbone links. It looks to be the same "steal from peter to feed paul" way of dealing with bandwidth congestion without investing in network infrastructure.
Getting telecoms away from corporate welfare and into genuine market competition will go much farther to address bandwidth problems.
Re:Of course, he has an agenda (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:News Just In (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.
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.