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Networking The Internet

Maturing Net Grows More Slowly 147

Posted by Zonk from the just-like-a-tree dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has an article covering the slowing growth rate of Internet traffic." From the article: "Growth rates in some territories was staying high, said Mr. Mauldin, at 76% in Asia and 70% in Latin American but even these were down on 2004. Currently the amount of traffic flowing between nations is approximately one terabit per second. If growth rates hold up this is likely to hit three terabits per second by 2008. Much of the growth over the last few years has come about because of the rise in the popularity of file-sharing that encourages people to swap and share large media files, said Mr. Mauldin. "
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Maturing Net Grows More Slowly More

Maturing Net Grows More Slowly

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  • Wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by Alex P Keaton in da ( 882660 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:31AM (#13407442) Homepage
    Who would have thought....
    It just goes to show how big something can get in a relatively short period of time.
    I plan to do my part towards getting the three terabits a second by downloading some porn and music this afternoon.

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)

      by Alex P Keaton in da ( 882660 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:35AM (#13407480) Homepage
      I love it when the first post gets modded redundant! At least I can get some pleasure out of the fact that I, unlike the mod, know what redundant means!
      Of course, that and $2 will get me a cup of coffee...
      In all seriousness, this numbers are only going to go up as we get more and more of our TV, Newspapers, Movies and Music over the net...
    • You forgot to post the torrent you are using to download teh pr0n. I'll join you in wasting some bandwidth provided it isn't that midget vs. donkey stuff again. I felt ill for weeks.

  • How about instead of.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AviLazar ( 741826 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:33AM (#13407452) Journal
    swap and share large media files, said Mr Mauldin. "

    She just says "swap and share large files"
    • She just says "swap and share large files"

      I'm pretty sure that the majority of traffic really is large media files, as in, the media being audio, video or even disc media images.
      • Except it implies that is the only purpose of P2P, which continues to spread the stigma that P2P is only for sending such files. And when people think of "media files" they think of movies, music, copyrights, pirating, bad bad bad little hackers in their momma's basement stealing from those poor movie artists.

        • Re:How about instead of.... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by FLAGGR ( 800770 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:48AM (#13407621)
          So wait, you mean instead of downloading media files off p2p your downloading cd keys? Well son they don't take up much space, so they don't count.

          It's the truth, I'm sorry. Movies are gigabytes, and I have friends that download them like crazy. It surprises me that the traffic in these terratories is only 1TB, I have friends that go through more than that in a week of file sharing.

          P2P is used for stealing stuff. Plain and simple. Sure, maybe you (I doubt it, but maybe) use it soley for legal purposes, but 99.99999999999% don't. Do I think it should go away? No, I'm greedy. At least I admit it though. Tell the truth, you downloaded the latest Brittany Spears album didn't you?
          • It's the point that saying, w/o any addendums, "Media files" implies what I originally said. I know pirating happens, I won't deny it, but many people use P2Ps for legit purposes.

            I don't d/l my movies *EVAR* --- I pay for them through NetFlix :D Much better quality, and less work - for only 17/month thats a steal...I mean deal.

            Oh I didn't D/L any Brittany Spears album...I bought them (runs, ducks, "NO I AM NOT GAY, SHE IS UBER HOT, EVEN WHEN PREGNANT")
          • It surprises me that the traffic in these terratories is only 1TB, I have friends that go through more than that in a week of file sharing.

            Why are you comparing your "friends" who purportedly share 1TB[sic] of data a week with the London Internet Exchange who monitors about 79272345600MB (604800Tb - 1Tb/s) of data a week? The article also clearly stated that local traffic is most likely equal to international traffic, but not monitored by LINX. Last time I checked the term files weren't to the exclusion

          • Sure, maybe you (I doubt it, but maybe) use it soley for legal purposes, but 99.99999999999% don't.

            Wow, do you mean that's only 0.0007 part of AviLazar uses P2P legally? I just wonder which part you are talking about...

            (and that's assuming all 7 billion people uses P2P, so that part might be much more smaller in fact...)

            • (and that's assuming all 7 billion people uses P2P, so that part might be much more smaller in fact...)

              That's rather difficult seeing as the population of the world is 6,446,131,400.

          • Liar. (Score:4, Interesting)

            by FatSean ( 18753 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @10:54AM (#13408304) Homepage Journal
            Copyright Infringement may be oft compared to 'theft' or 'stealing' but they are certainly different.

            If you want to consider yourself a thief, go ahead. Personally, I delete 90% of the stuff I download. The stuff I keep I end up buying as DVDs when they come out and chucking the inferior downloaded copy.

            So if you consider me to be a thief because I don't want to wait for my favorite TV show to come to DVD...AND I don't want to record it myself so instead rely on a friend who records it for me...

            You should stop drinking the kool-ade!

          • I use P2P for a few things. The largest volume being downloading game files. Every Tuesday. ;)

          • Re:How about instead of.... (Score:5, Informative)

            by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @11:56AM (#13408937)
            P2P is used for stealing stuff. Plain and simple.

            Ok here we go again...

            Stealing and theft by legal definition of the USA courts means you have denied other the use or value or therof property they legally own. Therefore theft is a crime that is tried in criminal courts...

            Downloading movies and music is copyright violation which is a civil infraction. Therefore Copyright Infringment is tried in civil courts...

            Do you know what the main and most important legal definition between these two matters are? You should know this because if anyone were ever to bring you to court...

            In a criminal court, they have to prove you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt... A civil court does not.

            Think about what that means... It's very important that you know this, but many people in the US are not aware of this minor fact unless of course they had the speech from the local judge after they were made to go to Jury duty *coughs*
          • P2P is used for stealing stuff. Plain and simple.

            I know! My buddies and me stole a truck the other night on P2P! A brand new Chevy Avalanche! Its F-ing' awesome!.
            Hooray for broadband! I'm going to fire up napster and steal a sandwich now!

          • P2P is used for stealing stuff. Plain and simple.

            Really? In my dictionary, stealing refers to deny someone of something already in his or her possession. It refers neither to copying someone else's possessions, nor denying someone of potential future possessions.

            Regardlessly of whether I agree that copyright infringement is morally wrong or not, let's call it by what it is: "Copyright infringement" -- not "stealing". Calling "copyright infringment" "stealing" is just the RIAA's way of demonizing it mor

          • Tell the truth, you downloaded the latest Brittany Spears album didn't you?

            No. I did not. That is the truth. Any additional questions?
          • It surprises me that the traffic in these terratories is only 1TB, I have friends that go through more than that in a week of file sharing.

            The quoted figure was one terabyte per second, so your friends who take a whole week to process one terabyte do not impress me.
        • I'll have you know I rent the basement I live in thank you very much.
        • Someone instruct me as to how my above post is flamebait? I am replying, logically, to a person who replied to me.
          • Don't get too wrapped up in individual comment moderations. It could be anything from a rogue jackass down-modding you at random to a mere jerk with mod points who disagreed with you.

            Down-mods of people with good karma are always suspicious, which is why they tell you that modding up is more important than modding down. I almost never mod down; if you troll at AC it's just not worth my mod points to lower you from zero, and non-ACs are far less likely to troll/flame. But the good news is that one's karm
        • If all (or even most) of P2P traffic is legit, then why do you have any problem whatsoever with how the file breakdown is characterized? Who cares how many media files are shared/downloaded if it's all legit?
      • The vast majority of internet traffic are trillions and trillions and trillions of tiny voltage oscillations...
    • Perhaps because she's not pushing an agenda that relies on concealing the obvious fact that the majority of "large" files being transfered via P2P are media files.

      If the vast majority of P2P traffic is, as your ilk claim, legitimate, why try so hard to shift the emphasis away from media files?
      • Because, for the THIRD time, "Media files" has a stigma behind it and has a specific implication - movies, music, games.

        While I am not doubting the numbers, I think it is an unfair stigma.

        Read all the thread replies under my name before replying, you would have seen I stated this a few times (though in different words).
        • I did read your posts, and I still wonder why you believe that stigma is unfair. Since you don't doubt the numbers, I can only assume (and correct me if I'm wrong) that you believe that the majority of media traffic is legitimate.

          And if you don't think the stigma is unfair, what is the problem here?
          • Her statement implies that all P2P is used for is to send movies, music and games which are considered (for the most part, and by the majority population) illegal. I do not disagree that sending a movie w/o permission is illegal, but I disagree that is the sole purpose of P2P. She needed to clarify her statements, because her lack of clarification made a big statement. That is my problem.

  • Memes. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Poromenos1 ( 830658 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:36AM (#13407486) Homepage
    Obviously the traffic is due to Numa Numa, the starwars kid and All Your Base. Doesn't he know anything?!

    • Re:Memes. (Score:1, Troll)

      by Poromenos1 ( 830658 )
      Nono, I was going for funny.
    • " Obviously the traffic is due to Numa Numa, the starwars kid and All Your Base. Doesn't he know anything?!"

      Actually, I was wondering how sites like Slashdot and iFilm.com have affected this. Beyond P2P, you also have online flash-mob type activities, which would include these.

      For instance, 100,000 people watching streams of John Steward call Tucker Carlson a you-know-what on Crossfire undoubtedly had an impact (not even considering multiple views). I'm sure these numbers are nowhere, by themselves, even

  • Is P2P traffic really THAT high? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cbreaker ( 561297 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:36AM (#13407487) Journal
    "Much of the growth over the last few years has come about because of the rise in the popularity of file-sharing that encourages people to swap and share large media files, said Mr Mauldin. "

    Sounds like another "Well, it's on the news all the time so it must be sucking up a lot of bandwidth."

    I don't really buy it. There's so many more millions of users that don't do large file download/uploads then do, and I think that the total bandwidth of all these people logging in, checking e-mail, browsing the web, etc is a lot more substantial then any "large large media files" shared amongst a select few.

    I could be wrong of course, but last I checked HTTP was still the #1 protocol in use, and there's no data here to prove that p2p is sucking up more bandwidth then that.
    • Guys, Sharing media files may not mean P2P. I hate to say it but it is possible to email a couple of meg picture of the kid/grandkid nowdays. With email like gmail/hotmail/... allowing attachments in the multimeg range, the odd photo or sound bite times a few million people can add up.

      Think camera phone ...

      • But they did say sharing large files. A photo or sound bite isn't a large file, and e-mail attachments are just e-mails, which would have been recorded as such.

        I agree that it doesn't necessarily mean p2p, but when they say people sharing large files it definitely indicates as much.
        • My point is that Grandma is 'sharing' pictures when she emails them. So are several other non techies that I talk to. The 'I sent Sue that picture of little Joey the other day and she loved it. If you have other pictures to share I'd be happy to send them on.' comments abound. Hell a good percentage of non techies don't know if they are using outlook or IE for email. So it REALLY depends on how the data was collected/collated.

          Did someone look for filenames ending in .jpg, .mp3, .wmv, .gif, and .avi fol
          • They didn't say P2P directly, but this was a quote from the article:

            "Much of the growth over the last few years has come about because of the rise in the popularity of file-sharing that encourages people to swap and share large media files"

            To me, that is a strong insinuation of tools like BitTorrent, the MP3/Video file sharing software like Kazaa, etc. Of course, it could mean any number of things, but I do believe that e-mail would have been in it's own catagory no matter what people are sending to each

    • Re:Is P2P traffic really THAT high? (Score:5, Informative)

      by colonslashslash ( 762464 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:56AM (#13407704) Homepage
      I could be wrong of course, but last I checked HTTP was still the #1 protocol in use, and there's no data here to prove that p2p is sucking up more bandwidth then that.

      Actually, in terms of quantity of traffic, BitTorrent is way in the lead with roughly 35% of all internet traffic, followed by eMule and Fastrack.

      Source:Cache Logic [cachelogic.com]

    • There's so many more millions of users that don't do large file download/uploads then do, and I think that the total bandwidth of all these people logging in, checking e-mail, browsing the web, etc is a lot more substantial then any "large large media files" shared amongst a select few.

      Couldn't it just be the fact that files in general are getting larger? 10 years ago, how many 1 gig files were out on the Internet to download?

      Nowadays, look at all the huge files out there... movies, music (look at arch [archive.org]

      • I guess their wording is probably poor, because when someone says "because of the rise in the popularity of file-sharing that encourages people to swap and share large media files" it doesn't sound like this is people downloading from web sites.

        I agree about the modem users - the internet at large is really (and finally, in some cases) moving away from catering to dial-up users. The unfortunate part is that it leaves a whole lot of people behind that Verizon or the other telcos decided not to service.

    • Re:Is P2P traffic really THAT high? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PhreakOfTime ( 588141 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @10:08AM (#13407813) Homepage

      You are wrong actually. You failed to realize what the overall point of this was, and would rather attach your own mistrust of journalism(not necessarily a bad thing) to it.

      From TFA; Currently the amount of traffic flowing between nations is approximately one terabit per second

      So yes, P2P network are what make up a majority of this traffic. It is a gross misunderstanding of the facts to think that when you send a picture file to your granparents 2 sates away, or have your home page defaulted to MSN, or browsing to sites that are located mainly in your country of origin, that it somehow adds to the traffic Between countries.

      Do you see the difference? Im trying real hard not to be confrontational here...

      • If you're trying not to be confrontational, you can try leaving out deliberately inflammatory wordings like "failed to realize", "gross misunderstanding of the facts", and "would rather attach your own mistrust of journalism". Starting with "You are wrong, actually" is a bit humorous, since you're tying into the poster's text, but the trick to being non-confrontational is to point out how the poster can be wrong without it being a personal failing on their part.

        Repeating yourself with bold marks, and the

        • yes you can be wrong without being stupid. And you can be right without being smart. However, if you read an article and fail to understand(and it is a failure) the definition of a preposition, you are wrong, not stupid.

          none of my statements were false. There was a gross misunderstanding of the facts, he was wrong, and he did attach his own mistrust of journalism to the story. Because I didnt hold his hand and be his mother does not mean Im being confrontational. As far as rhetorical, no it was a real que

        • Uh...I'm confused. When did phrases like "failed to realize" and "misunderstanding the facts" becom inflamatory? Now, I suppose "Stupid, WOP, Dego, Dipshit, nincompoop, idiot" is not inflammatory then? Let's get some perspective on "inflammatory" OK?
      • I run the domain ducker.org.uk for my family.

        It's based in the US, because the hosting company (hostmatters.com) offered a good deal at the time.

        So when I send an email from me (in Edinburgh) to my parents (near London) it goes via the US...
      • I mean, sheesh. Relax, drink a beer.

        Being non-confrontational requires actually *BEING* non-confrontational - you can't just say "I'm trying not be" and have it not be.

        I was going to respond to you, but you're a real condescending prick so I'm not even going to bother.

        Good day.
    • Sounds like another "Well, it's on the news all the time so it must be sucking up a lot of bandwidth."

      A couple of years ago, a large German research network established a lower bound of 46% P2P traffic at its borders. This was before BitTorrent was in wide use, and I would be extremely surprised if the P2P share has decreased since then.
    • I recently graduated from a major research university and can remember a case from my freshman year. A student set up p2p file sharing on his computer without any limits on his uploads. His computer ended up being the 3rd highest bandwidth user that month. Only the physics simulation computers beat him out.
    • What, you don't remember how suprnova.org Bittorrent traffic accounted for a healthy percentage (hint: 35%) of ALL international traffic? [yahoo.com]

      Come on, man. I get about 100k of Email per day, unless there are meaningful attachments. I go to my favorite MP3 site [allofmp3.com] and chew thru a week's email (including attachments) in about 15 minutes.

      No, I don't do "copyright infringing" P2P anymore, unless it appears to be at least reasonably legit.

      And for those that do, it gets huge. FAST. (PS: How much of P2P is over HTTP? Nap
  • Something wrong with using bytes? I know I can divide by 8, but still... thinking... eww...
    • Bits are the things being transfered. Not Bytes.

      A byte is a measurement that refers to the space needed to store 8 bits.

      If I send someone 8 shoes, would you suggest that I refer to it as 8 feet (or 96 inches) of shoes?
      • I would suggest you refer to it as 4 pairs of shoes....

        Or is a pair the space needed to store 2 shoes?
      • A byte is not the space needed to store 8 bits, but is a group of 8 bits (on most computer). And AFAIK A byte is the smallest addressable unit. So you really are sending bytes broken into bits. So I'd say both are acceptable.

        If I'm sending you let's say bicycle, and it takes 3 shipment to send you one, and each shipment takes 1 hour, and you'll always receive multiple of 3 shipments, you could say you receive 1 shipment an hour, or 1/3 bicycle per hour

        Anyway,that's the way I see it
  • In 2000 it was barely hitting 5 Gbit/s, the equivalent of a DVD film every 10 seconds.

    What I want to know is how long would it take to fill a double decker bus with these DVDs.
    Or more to the point, how long before the RIAA slap an injunction on you?
    • I miss the old Library of Congress and floppy disk comparisions...

      In 1998 the papers would say:

      "The equivilant of 1,500 libraries of congress are transferred every second on the information superhighway"

      or

      "The amount of data flowing overseas over the information superhighway every second is the same as a stack of floppy disks the height of the Eiffel tower.

  • Conflicted... (Score:5, Funny)

    by NoTheory ( 580275 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:41AM (#13407547)
    Gotta love statements like "If growth rates hold up this is likely to hit three terabits per second by 2008" In an article called "Maturing Net Grows More Slowly" about the falling rate of internet growth. I know we've got short attention spans, but how about some internal consistency? ::shrugs:: that or maybe they like meaningless projections.

  • Might not be true... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sheepdot ( 211478 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:45AM (#13407596) Journal
    I'd be interested in how things like BitTorrent and ISPs using software to cache P2P traffic has helped in this regard. The amount of bandwidth that might have been otherwise used may have increased, but due to slimmer protocols and better distribution methods, the amount of traffic may have appeared to have grown at a slower rate.
    • Although increases in efficiency are good, and it would be hard to argue that it had no effect, I still wonder if the underlying reason for the slower growth is less people buying their first computer and getting connected for the first time.

      You really can never tell, but P2P is the brunt of so much critisism its kind of hard to mesh out what the truth really is.

    • That's especially important given that this data was all about bits travelling between countries, not within the country. From TFA:

      Mr Mauldin was keen to point out that the measurements it was taking were not a snapshot of all net traffic. This was because Telegeography does not count the amount of data flowing over cables within national boundaries which, he said, was likely to be at least as large cross-border traffic.

  • Spam (Score:2, Interesting)

    by overlord ( 5277 )
    They forgot to take in account the grow of the Spam.

  • What's the bottleneck? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can believe that the number of new subscribers is down, but if I had twice as much bandwidth available I'd certainly use it (for bittorrent).

    Is internet growth limited by the last mile? Meaning people can't get any more speed from their current cable/dsl connections?

  • This is GOOD news (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It means any further technological advances will have more impact on the perceived net speed.
  • I would venture to say it is being refined.

    The days of flashy graphics and gimicks are going away and the true nature of what the Internet was desgined for was for serving up information.

    "It's content stupid" ;)

  • Slow but steady growth, then (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joshsnow ( 551754 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:55AM (#13407686) Journal
    Well, as machines get more powerful (mores law) and end-user bandwidth increases it becomes possible to do things that weren't possible before. Things like streaming HD video on demand with no interruptions or loss of quality, downloading a multi-cd linux distro in less than 60 seconds etc, VoIP etc.

    This could lead to an increase in people doing things which weren't previously possible and larger file sizes as powerful machines can process more data.

    The upshot of that will be slow and steady growth of internet traffic.
    • Well, as machines get more powerful (mores law)

      I can't stand such obvious typos. It should be "as machines get more powerful (more laws are needed aaaargh)". For goodness' sake.

    • We SHOULD have VoIP and HD video on demand and TV-over-IP by now, and that would have kept the bandwidth growth up.

      Our CPU/video/audio cards have been capable of it for a couple years, and hard drives are just recently capable of it.

      The biggest issues I see are human... People don't yet completely grasp that VoIP will definitely be cheaper and more feature-full in the long run (especially once there's enough critical mass to ditch the POTS). And companies haven't yet stepped up to provide high-quality

    • No, Moore's law won't help us. Machines have been able to software-decode full-screen DVD's for several years now. Hard drives in shipping DVR's are large enough now (they're not enormously spacious, but they're good enough for now).

      Heck, even backbone dark-fiber was keeping up for a while. The problems are 1) last-mile bandwidth isn't keeping up, and 2) content-producers are afraid to put their content on the internet. (as detailed in my other post [slashdot.org])

  • Assumptions (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bchapp ( 905116 )
    How can you assume it is because of file sharing? As more people moved to broadband, websites and uses for the internet started getting WAY more complex. Free streaming news video, Java games, VoIP, Flash, all the new PC games, etc... These are the things that are using the bandwidth. P2P has been around for years and people have been sharing movies for years.

       
    • Why do you assume people are pulling facts out of thin air?

      Wired is running a very similar article [wired.com]:

      Today, CacheLogic estimates that P2P applications consume between 60 percent and 80 percent of capacity on consumer ISP networks. The fastest growth in P2P usage is coming in Asian nations with high broadband penetration rates, Parker said.

      The average size of traded files is growing, too, Parker said, and today exceeds 100 MB.

      CacheLogic is in a good position to know. Find a comparably credible sourc

  • Growth (Score:3, Interesting)

    by satsuke ( 263225 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @09:56AM (#13407715)
    Funny thing about this kind of growth .. at how little it started out as.

    For example, back in 1994/95 when my ISP had either a T1 shared nationally with a university (delphi) or the local guy (tyrell) with a single sparc4 and a 56kb line and a pack of modems.

    Funny thing was that at the time, your speed on the net was determined by a single T1. There was a default routed route between MCI and Sprintlink, a single T1, as long as you didn't have to traverse that link you were ok. Life was horrible if you had to across that link

    Now of course, my modem has better connectivity than the local ISP and my home broadband has better transfer and latency than either place.

    There are still some backwaters of the internet, a few years ago I found a university in Russia that was 9.6kb line out for their students (it was a short piece about the current uses of UUCP)

    Oh course we need fat (and getting fatter) pipes nowaddays, hell, the patch downloads for any significant update to Windows is larger than the total distribution size of Windows 95.

    Now if I could just get a FTTC here, than it'd be fast enough.

    • A couple years back it hit me:

      ISPs are offering connections greater than 4Mbps.

      A 1x CDROM drive is 150KBps...

      Not only are the patches bigger than Windows 95, but you could download them faster than the old machine could read them from the CD!

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • 600% is 6X growth. You're talking about 6000X increase, or 600,000% growth.

          Now, a bunch of those cycles are chewed up by wait states when going to external memory, which is why onchip cache is so important. Nevertheless, it's a huge increase.

          To date myself, my first computer class had a single model 33 teletype, at 110 bps, to share among 20 students. We stored our files on punched paper tape...
        • My "claim to fame" on this was ..

          started on a TI 99/4A ..

          first PC Hyundai 8088/8 w/ 32meg RLL drive, 640K, 5 1/4" floppy and an epson FX-80 printer (EGA graphics too) .. first modem was a 1200 baud Practical Peripherals (before they got swallowed by Hayes).

  • Fast pr0n! (Score:2, Funny)

    by skaap ( 681715 )
    I didnt realise pr0n could be THAT fast!

  • OT: Sammy? (Score:3, Funny)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Friday August 26, 2005 @10:09AM (#13407834) Homepage Journal
    Growth rates in some territories was staying high, said Mr Mauldin,

    He said this while laughing and slapping his knee. William b Williams then agreed with him.

    A few minutes later, Bobby Bittman came on stage and said "HOW ARE YA!?!!?" //guess the show.

  • Constant Reader (Score:2, Interesting)

    by AcheronHades ( 837485 )
    How long till we start measuring population density by data traffic?

  • We aint seen nothing yet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by el_womble ( 779715 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @10:33AM (#13408086) Homepage
    At the moment Joe Public is using the internet for web browsing, email and IM. Thats it, because it takes people a long time to get into the mind set of a new technology. Features my Mum is asking for now is easy file transfer to herself and collegues. She works for local government and regulary produces files that are more popular than she initially realised. At the moment her only option is email. Thats fine, until she spends most of her morning emailing the same file to people who suddenly decide they need a copy too (if its not her its her secretary). What she needs is a public, secure file dump, its not that I can't set one up for her, its that people get scared by new acronyms. Just go to be secure ftp site and download it is almost always followed by: "Huh?". I suggested .Mac, but her net admins (quite rightly) won't let her download or install executables, so its too difficult for her to set up in XP.
    • Huh? Just setup an FTP server to drop her files into a directory that is accessible via HTTP and tell her the link to the file is always http://foo.bar/files/ [foo.bar] + the file name. Then place a link to ftp://server.tld/ [server.tld] in her toolbar favourites in IE or whatever she uses and tell her to simply drop the file into the window.

      She can then mail the link to the people who want the file.

      (And, turn off accessing the directory listing to prevent snooping. Might be obvious to you and me, but I've seen stupid web server
      • Sheesh, that fucking filter. The toolbar link should read

        ftp: // user : password @ server . tld

        It'll login just fine with one click, without having to enter a PW, which from my experience is very important. Instant One-Click file dump.

        And while we're at it, I'm not using Windows for two years now, maybe she could even just extract the link to the file by right-clicking it and selecting "Copy link location" or whatever it's called. This implies knowledge of Copy and Paste, but most people who don't know of i

  • What I see from my corner of the woods (Score:3, Informative)

    by jmichaelg ( 148257 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @10:50AM (#13408265) Journal
    I live in a farm town in Central California that's served by Comcast. I work at home and access the web from about 5 am until 7 pm. When Comcast first installed fiber and offered Internet access, my downloads were running at around 4 mbits/sec which was considerably better than DSL's 1.5 mbit/sec. That was about 15 months ago. Recently, service has been oscillating. During the day, it's gotten up to 7 mbits/sec but at night, it has dropped to as low as 100 kbits/sec.

    At first I thought it was p2p traffic but that didn't make much sense since school is still out so the kids around here are home during the day. Turns out Comcast has offered a new service - you can download movies on demand via a Tivo like interface. Fast forward-pause-skip etc. My hunch is that when parents come home at night, they decide to watch a movie and it sucks up the available bandwidth. Since I use the net during the day, I'm not affected by the slowdown. However, if I came home at night and expected to relax with a good game of Counter Strike, I'd go back to DSL as night service on cable here truly sucks.

    If the cable companies can iron out the logistics and offer consistently decent service to all users, legitimate movie downloading will take off and 1 Terabit/sec will end up looking like a 1 mhz 6502.

  • I blame Debian (Score:3, Funny)

    by water-and-sewer ( 612923 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @11:05AM (#13408451) Homepage
    As a happy Debian user, I think it's time we fess up. It's us, happily apt-getting our systems into software Nirvana. That explains the Internet traffic. Those filesharers are just part-time affairs, amateurs really.

    Why just last night for example I apt-getted ("apt-got?") nearly a dozen software packages from a repository, not to mention all the libraries that were dependencies. On some nights I can do more.

    I keep trying to tell myself I can quit, but man, it's not easy. I love having all that software at my fingertips; and now with broadband I can download as much of it as I like. I don't even have to need it. I can quit apt-getting any time I want to, I just don't want to at the moment. I've got it under control, seriously. I've quit apt-getting before. Several times.

    Debian users, heed my call: you've got to start slowly and reduce your need to apt-get all that software. First try only apt-getting once a day, then once a week. Only apt-get update every six months, because hey, after all that time you deserve a reward. You just can't quit this stuff cold turkey.
  • Considering all the 'net is growing at 100% per week' crap that Worldcom was spewing, it is no wonder that things 'slowed down'. All that happened is that the numbers are finally catching up to reality.
  • Anybody that's ever taken a basic intro to marketing course (and hopefully most everyone else as well) will see this article as common sense. Just take a look at that inverted parabolic curve that's called the "Product LIfe Cycle." The early adopters come along, then its more mainstream and usage increases sharply. Then the product matures and the slope flattens out, and then as the product dies, it's usage drops again. Sorry for the common sense of this all, but that's just how it goes. I'd say soon t
  • quick, to the cloning tubes, boy wonder!

    ignore the fact that only so many people exist upon this earth and let's crank out some more!
  • ...confirmed this?

  • It's Me (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @12:35PM (#13409254)
    Currently the amount of traffic flowing between nations is approximately one terabit per second. ...
    Much of the growth over the last few years has come about because of the rise in the popularity of file-sharing that encourages people to swap and share large media files, said Mr Mauldin.

    It's me. In the last five years, I've discovered foreign cinema way beyond what's domestically available. Fortunately my fellow humans in France, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and Russia are just fine with breaking their laws to share their countries movies with me. So, I'm doing about a terabit per second of foreign movie downloads nowadays.

    With all of the hollywood remakes and imports recently (Ring, Dark Water, The Departed, Shall we Dance, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, etc, etc) it really is nice to be able to see the original movies when they are first released in their own countries. Not to mention the stuff that is so beyond American sensabilities that it will never make it to the big screen over here (Oldboy, Audition, Visitor Q, etc).

    Sure, I end up watching some crap, but when its free that's not a problem, and when I do find something extraordinarily good, it then makes it worthwhile to go order a real high-quality DVD from one of those websites that is mostly non-English and still be assured that I am getting good value for my money. And sometimes the movies actually do make it here with a domestic DVD release, something that was exceptionally rare back in the days of vhs before the net was widespread.

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