AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010
Blame it on all that content, especially videos, bring thrown into the pipes. But don't wish for government intervention, executive says.(By Andrew Donoghue of ZDNet UK) 7 months ago
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I've always seen the Internet as this giant abyss - it's hard to imagine it running out of "space."
I'm still confused on the concept of "net neutrality," despite the explanation provided by the article. Any information would be much appreciated!
"In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today."
I don't buy it. Every time someone mentions a "wall" in technology, new technology comes out a proves the notion wrong. There really is no limit to human invention. Especially when it comes to intangible technology. Think about it; we've created the internet from a grain of sand. Now someone is saying, we're coming to the end of it? That dog won't hunt.
That's what the latest South Park episode was about, but it doesn't make sense. The Internet is a network of interconnected computers and servers. I don't see how it could run out of space or bandwidth, because all it takes to increase the two is adding another server. That's where the logic is missing in this argument. Let's look at the physics: 1) The Internet consists of electromagnetic signals that are transported across phone lines and society through satellites. 2) The particles that carry Internet data and traffic are too tiny to ever be prohibited from movement. If that wasn't true, black holes would magically appear as we surf the web... 3) The reach of the Internet grows when new servers and computers are created and used. In accordance with Moore's law, very small computers hold massive amounts of data, and allow for much greater amounts of web traffic. Any computer can be used as a web server, so it just doesn't seem possible, especially in 2 years. Scary, but BS.
Interesting story. I've been reading and listening to a ton of coverage on 3G, 4G, DOCSIS 3.0, and fiber to the home, but I haven't been hearing much on backbone improvements. It would be interesting to see back-bone capacity charted against consumer downlink capacity to find the break-even point. I wonder if someone at AT&T already ran the numbers and decided upon 2010 for that reason. Still, it's far-fetched to me that we would hit capacity that soon.
@pollyp I'm not surprised that people are still confused about the concept of Net Neutrality. I can't say that I 100% understand it either but the way I see it is this: Some of the major corporations and ISPs realise the value of content on the internet and want to put restrictions on what their users can view. Think of this as a subscriber base if you will. You pay them for their service which will give you access to their and and their affiliates sites. To view something that is not provided by the original service you may need to subscribe to a different service as well. Kind of like pay TV and how you purchase different channels only you are paying for access to different sites and domains. This is an extreme worst case scenario as I'm positive there will still be plenty of sites that are in the "public" domain. I think that it would be just major corporations that would want to charge for access. Net Neutrality calls for every service to be neutral, all sites available to all.