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2010: Sorry, the internet is full.

To be honest, that's a "slow news day" article if ever I saw one.

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.
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Ok, so when was the last time a year went by without any investment in the tubes, anywhere in the world? :rolleyes:

"In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today."
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I'd be surprised. My flatmates and I get a very decent 7.6mb connection (8mb is pretty much a theoretical maximum, and to get anywhere above 7, you really need to be within 1km of the exchange). That means a throughput of 950kbps or so; 57mb per minute; 82.08Gb a day, or only 2.46Tb a month.


Right now, the average monthly combined transfer in my flat is around 2Tb (last 30 day log period shows 1.8Tb in, and 200Gb out). We pay an (excessive) flat rate for properly unlimited business broadband, and make sure we get the most out of it.

That thinking would put this flat at more than 40Tb a month worth of transfer. Unlikely there'll be a hope in hell of moving that kind of data without fibre, which has no chance in hell of happening in the UK within the next five years, if ever.


As someone who's worked in the ISP and datacentre provider industry, I don't see how in the hell there's going to be an issue, anyway.

FUD.
 
jonbravo77 said:
Sounds to me that since it will take $55billion to upgrade the infrastructure that they will try to start putting taxes on the internet. There has been talk for some time on how to tax ppl for surfing the web.

Another way for big corporate to get more money.

Peace:cool:
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Um, telecom pays for people and equipment to build the infrastructure

salary are taxed
equipment are taxed

Government is getting money already.
 
bigandy said:
(8mb is pretty much a theoretical maximum, and to get anywhere above 7, you really need to be within 1km of the exchange).
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I presume that only goes for intarweb carried over phone lines. I'm pretty sure the limit (both speed and distance) is much higher for fiber (which my ISP/cable TV provider ran along all poles about 10 years ago).
 
Counterfit said:
I presume that only goes for intarweb carried over phone lines. I'm pretty sure the limit (both speed and distance) is much higher for fiber (which my ISP/cable TV provider ran along all poles about 10 years ago).
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Yes, the limit for fibre is much further.

There are technologies emerging in other countries for far higher phone line based rates (VDSL2+, for example), which also extend the current rates to up to 5, or even 10km from the exchange, while offering 250mb at the exchange, to 100mb to those luckily enough to be within 500m of their telephone exchange.

The issue with these is they crap out in a short distance, and by the time you get to 1000m, you're down to 50mb. As mentioned, the biggest advantage is it's at ADSL2+ (18mb) rates at 2km. However, all we'll get here is ISPs advertising 250mb services, and a lot of pissed customers getting real speeds of around 10mb. :rolleyes:

We certainly need fibre in the UK to further the cause (cable is going nowhere in terms of expansion, and is limited to the bigger settlements), but at an estimated cost of around £18 billion ($35bn), and a real cost probably double that, it ain't going to happen in a hurry - at least until we're waaaay behind. Even H2O Networks' Fibre-over-poop is unlikely to reach far.

:(
 
runplaysleeprun said:
I think they can try to reclaim some, weren't wide swaths given out early on to large universities/corporations?
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I did some work in 2002 for a company that had fully routable addresses on their global internal network, as they'd bought a class B network range at some time in the past. Apparently they now use RFC1918 addressing, having made quite a large amount of cash selling blocks of the range to ISPs over the past five years.
 
jonbravo77 said:
Sounds to me that since it will take $55billion to upgrade the infrastructure that they will try to start putting taxes on the internet. There has been talk for some time on how to tax ppl for surfing the web.
Click to expand...

I really dislike this idea. Why should we pay for the infrastructure? These ISPs are just companies like any other. They should invest into a new infrastructure, and recoup their investment into the infrastructure through the monthly fee they charge.

The only decent alternative solution is to charge us the tax for the infrastructure, but make all the ISPs charge us a lower monthly fee. After all, they didn't invest in this infrastructure -- we did. Since they're not paying for infrastructure anymore, that portion of our current bill should be eliminated.
 
dragonmantek said:
i just dont think thats possible...

think about it, the internet was created so that there really is no limit, because its created by the people, kinda.
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Created by military people, yes. Originally the 'Net was meant to be much more distributed, which would allow it to handle much greater load. Over time, it's been funneled through a very small handful of "backbone" providers. Now those providers are starting to whine that they can't take the traffic anymore.

Time to go back to a fully distributed 'Net. More providers, more interconnections, local meshes. Let AT&T wonder why nobody needs them anymore...

Alright, someone needs to lay the line across the oceans. They'll have a place there.
 
bigandy said:
My flatmates and I get a very decent 7.6mb connection
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:rolleyes: It's always amusing to see these comments from you lot in "first-world" countries. The fastest available down here is a 1024 Kbps connection that costs way too much. I doubt I'll be one of those households that use as much bandwidth as the entire internet today anytime soon.
 
So AT&T is complaining because the internet is going to fill up in two years and they're too tight to expand it....:rolleyes:...Whatever happened to advancement and innovation?

NC MacGuy said:
Title reminds me of the South Park episode when the gang went to Ca. because there was still some internet left there:D

Good episode with the usual biting social commentary.
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:D Yeah I thought the same thing reading this thread. Oh, and the internet will only survive a nuclear war, localoid, so as long as the giant wireless router doesn't get blown up :p
 
I am going to go against the grain here and say it is believable. I bet if some one finds a graph of internet useage over the past 10-15 years I am willing to bet good money we would see it growing exponentially.

Look at how much of our stuff is done over the internet that 5 years ago we would never of considered. We have streaming Video. Both Verizon and ATT deliever digital TV over the internet. I have ATT uverse so at one time I can and sometime do suck down 4 streaming video for my TV while gaming online or downloading big files at my computer. That is a lot of bandwidth for one person.

Look at everything now done over the internet that even 5 years ago was a pipe dream and no one would think it would happen. Our lives revolve around the net now.

As for ATT complaining they are pointing out that at it is going to get harder and harder to keep up with demand. Remember most of our internet is delievered over very old technology of copper wire.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
I am going to go against the grain here and say it is believable. I bet if some one finds a graph of internet useage over the past 10-15 years I am willing to bet good money we would see it growing exponentially.
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And investment and especially expansion is, and always has, grown ahead of demand. Why should that change all of a sudden? This is what I don't understand - everyone crapping themselves because the tubes are filling up, but it's not going to happen, as we won't stop improving and upgrading things!
 
dragonmantek said:
i just dont think thats possible...

think about it, the internet was created so that there really is no limit, because its created by the people, kinda.

i'm not an internet expert, but since the price of servers are dropping, and storage space is increasing, you could just go out and buy a huge amount of space for really cheap.

and i've read articles somewhere, that some scientists are trying to create internet 2.0, but i dont think that will happen, and it seems ridiculous.

point in case, internet will be here forever.
Click to expand...

Internet2 :

http://www.internet2.edu/network/
 
bigandy said:
And investment and especially expansion is, and always has, grown ahead of demand. Why should that change all of a sudden? This is what I don't understand - everyone crapping themselves because the tubes are filling up, but it's not going to happen, as we won't stop improving and upgrading things!
Click to expand...


there is the problem. Look at how far ahead they are ahead. it had been shrinking every year.

More importantly a lot of the expansion has been on the very old copper wire system. We are starting to hit the limits on that system of moving data. Just can not keep shoving more data though those wires.
 
Do not worry ... If it gets too bad, Rogers will just throttle us canadians back to good old 56K connections .... Or better yet ... 300 baud. Then there will be pleanty of bandwidth FOR ALL!!!

Thanks for looking out for us Rogers ... What would we ever do without your infinately greedy wisdom?

Cheers :) :)
 
I really don't see this as a big issue; AT&T gets a lot of business as an ISP, they're not going to let the internet fill and die, then they'd go under. No, they might complain, but one way or another AT&T and it's ISP friends will save us all.
 
what I think we will run into be times during the day our internet is just going to be so slow because of to much traffic.

Going back in history about 5 years to when I believe baster was hitting or one of the emails worms. Those generated so much traffic at time it took the internet world wide to a crawl.

Mind you it only lasted as few days but it was pretty rough. Everything was slow. The ISP where over loaded with traffic.
 
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