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."

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 [nemertes.com], 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

[ppanon]

Um, no. He's talking about the massive trade and government deficits the US has been running for the last 7 years. At some point the people who have been funding those (mainly the Chinese) may get tired of doing so. At which point, if they stop buying dollars to support the trade deficit and bonds to support the federal deficit, but instead start selling them, the dollar will be massively devalued, leading to a huge increase in the price of all imported consumer goods. Compared to 30 years ago, there's very little manufacturing that actually still creates goods in the US. Most of it has been outsourced to countries with cheap labour and poor environmental stewardship.

That will be good for your trade balance, of course, but bad for your economy since the high increase in the cost of goods will probably lead to a severe recession - people will be buying a lot less when everything suddenly costs many times more. It may take a decade or more for the US to recover. On the other hand, house prices won't seem that ridiculous anymore after 150% or more inflation, but anybody living on a fixed income, like retirees, are going to be seriously screwed.

And in case you think that isn't ever going to happen, apparently the Chinese have been making noise [nytimes.com] about shifting their ownership of foreign funds to away from currencies that have been showing recent weakness.

Of course, when the US can no longer afford to buy foreign goods, especially basic items like steel, and all their manufacturing capacity has been dismantled, why that might just be a good time for the Peep's Republic to invade Taiwan.

Re:yay free market

[pete6677]

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

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.

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

[shadow_slicer]

That's why you don't make VoIP work "better" than bittorrent, you make it work "different" than bittorrent. With QoS your VoIP (Real-time streams) would get say, a fixed 9kb/s or whatever of "Guaranteed Low Latency" (TM). And your bittorrent (BULK Traffic) would get what ever is left over, but makes no guarantee of when your packets will arrive. The point is that if you make bittorrent act like VoIP, it will be limited to the real-time rate which should be slower than the BULK rate.

Of course the gotcha there is the "should be". If the telco's are cheap and don't upgrade, then even QoS can't stop the brownouts. But then again if the telco's don't upgrade, there'll be brownouts anyway...

Re:Bandwidth "brownouts" are nothing new

[greengrass]

In the UK, there are five brownouts per week, Monday - Friday, from 18:00 onwards.

Re:yay free market

[Retric]

High energy radio active waste is an energy source. The vast majority of this so called waste is fuel. We extract around 2% of the available energy because that's the cheep part but the idea of high energy waste is silly if it's really hot then we can extract energy from it. If it's going to be around for million's of years then it's safe.

Read up on breeder reactors and take a real look at this issue.

The other issue is the extreme levels nuke plants are regulated. For an idea just how silly this is: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2DA1F3AF935A15751C1A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print [nytimes.com]

http://www.uic.com.au/ral.htm [uic.com.au]

PS: I seem to recall an issue where the concrete was producing more radiation than the "acceptable dose" before the plant went into operation. I can't find the details but background radiation is often well above the "acceptable" level inside a power plant and nobody bothers to tell people living in the area.