Caution: Heavy Internet traffic ahead. Delays possible.
For months there has been a rising chorus of alarm about the surging growth in the amount of data flying across the Internet. The threat, according to some industry groups, analysts and researchers, stems mainly from the increasing visual richness of online communications and entertainment — video clips and movies, social networks and multiplayer games.
Moving images, far more than words or sounds, are hefty rivers of digital bits passing through the Internet’s pipes and gateways, requiring, in industry parlance, more bandwidth. Last year, by one estimate, the video site YouTube, owned by Google, consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000.
In a widely cited report published last November, a research firm projected that user demand for the Internet could outpace network capacity by 2011. The title of a debate scheduled next month at a technology conference in Boston sums up the angst: “The End of the Internet?”
Okay, here’s a prognostication from the Briar Patch Crystal Ball: It’ll never be outpaced (technology will find a way), but it will get a lot more expensive; perhaps beyond the ability of an advertisement-supported web service to pay for itself. Goodbye free Google, Yahoo, etc.
[size=2][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
Moore’s law sees technology getting cheaper and cheaper while the processing speeds increase vastly. As long as the Internet remains unshackled from government, unlike the earlier telecom industry, I believe you’ll see the price getting closer to $0.00 and the capabilities getting larger.
see (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free) for more info.
As a software engineer in network intrusion prevention we’re seeing vastly improved throughput that will ultimately allow you to instantaneously download and play movies in DVD quality. Sans regulation the future looks bright indeed.
Thanks for the correction, Justin. I assumed they were looking at some physical limitation that would supposedly supersede Moore’s law. It didn’t happen for the supposed limitation on how many switches could be put on a micochip, and it won’t happen for the supposed bandwidth limitation.
The faster the processing speed, the more data-intensive the electronic product.