Can The Internet Ever Die Or Crash

[TheShinyMac]

Is it possible? Is there only so much bandwith available. What will happen when there are not any more domains to sell? Can the internet be overloaded with information. Which government has the most control over the internet? Just some questions I have.

 

[rdowns]

I vote we end it all here.

 

[TheShinyMac]

These are some serious questions i remember reading that there are only so many domains left

 

[darklyt]

This happened at least once before. One of the times was documented here:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/breaking_news_all_online_data

Remember, the technology behind the internet is all finite, so there are limitations and the possibility all that technology fails.

 

[boast]

Is it possible?

Technically, it is possible. ISPs, both landline and wireless, could suddenly stop selling service and end it all. lol

Is there only so much bandwith available.

Yes, but as technology grows, so would the bandwidth. Or would, except ISPs are stingy and don't like wasting money upgrading their network.

What will happen when there are not any more domains to sell?

We have 25 letters and 10 digits that can be used in combination to create billions (randomly throwing that out there. I did bad in discrete math and combinatorics gives me a headache) of names. User names still exist, so why not domain names? There is the problem of IP addresses running out, which is why there is a push for moving to IPv6

Can the internet be overloaded with information.

Lol, I'm not even sure what that would mean?

Which government has the most control over the internet?

Uhh, I would guess China, based on country population, and their use of the great firewall. But Australia was also starting to do some censorship as well. But no one government have control over the "entire internet" as it is not a single entity.

 

[MotleyPete]

It's definitely worth a try

 

[steve2112]

The internet was designed to be decentralized and redundant. The original DARPANET was designed to allow communications to continue after a nuclear attack, so the whole purpose was to allow it to not be vulnerable to a single attack.

The problem isn't the bandwidth. The problem is that the internet uses 13 root DNS servers for the entire net. Take those down, and you could actually crash the entire Internet. There have been DDOS attacks against these servers in the past, but they were not severe enough to crash everything. Given a dedicated attack or another DNS exploit, you could see a nasty crash. Things have gotten better since the old days of there literally only being 13 DNS servers, but they are still vulnerable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

 

[fireshot91]

We have 25 letters and 10 digits that can be used in combination to create billions

We have 26 letters....
And I agree with above, those 26 letters and 10 numbers, with a very high number of digits that could be used for a domain name, the possibilities are basically endless. (Speaking of which, anybody know the maximum number of characters in a domain name?)

 

[rdowns]

http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

 

[StephenCampbell]

Technically, it is possible. ISPs, both landline and wireless, could suddenly stop selling service and end it all. lol

Yes, but as technology grows, so would the bandwidth. Or would, except ISPs are stingy and don't like wasting money upgrading their network.

We have 25 letters and 10 digits that can be used in combination to create billions (randomly throwing that out there. I did bad in discrete math and combinatorics gives me a headache) of names. User names still exist, so why not domain names? There is the problem of IP addresses running out, which is why there is a push for moving to IPv6

Lol, I'm not even sure what that would mean?

Uhh, I would guess China, based on country population, and their use of the great firewall. But Australia was also starting to do some censorship as well. But no one government have control over the "entire internet" as it is not a single entity.

Using just the 25 letters, and limiting yourself to 25-character domain names, there are 88,817,841,970,012,523,233,890,533,447,265,625 possibilities.

 

[Gonzo3333]

I heard if you Google the word Google the internet will break. I remember that from the British T.V. show The I.T. Crowd.

 

[Gav2k]

In theory a large enough solar flare could take down alot but not all. All out nuclear war would though.

 

[jav6454]

You can make it look like the Internet crashed if you take down an important backbone through which people connect. Those affected will think the net came down.

 

[RobertD63]

This happened at least once before. One of the times was documented here:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/breaking_news_all_online_data

Remember, the technology behind the internet is all finite, so there are limitations and the possibility all that technology fails.

Lmao! That was such a great video, I was in tears at the end. Just cause of the subtle jokes they threw in there. Especially the Nigeria remark. I was rolling.

 

[ethical]

Anyone else thinking of the South Park episode where the internet crashes and they reset a massive router to get it running again?

I think I read somewhere that with IPv6 there are enough combinations of domains to allocate one to every square meter on the Earth. So I don't think we'll run out any time soon. More likely to run out of names for websites I reckon. How long until www.googleV2.com pops up?

 

[Mexbearpig]

If it ever crashes I will just head to my friends house, next starbucks, then the Apple store. If all else fails I'll head out Californeway.

 

[Theclamshell]

yea, but noone wants to go to www.ou432y59o47.com

 

[lefooey]

You can ... break the internet.