Hands up those who have heard the rumor that the internet isn’t capable of handling all we’re trying to throw at it. I assume that most of you have heard threats like this, and have been on the lookout for the internet’s successor.
But the simple fact of the matter is that, though this internet may not be perfect, it’s not as bad as some may say. Here are two “problems” and their realities.
A post over at the New Scientist technology blog by Tom Simonite, has asked the question, “will the internet ever peak?” Tom points to a 45% drop in traffic growth between 2004 and 2005 (see chart), and posits that we could reach a “peak net” in just a few years.
A peak net, according to Simonite, is a “scenario… in which internet traffic has stopped growing, and is poised to decline.” He points to a typically well researched piece on ArsTechnica, which asks a similar question. Arstechnica described the possibility of “the exaflood” – an uptick in traffic measured in exabytes – as “…fear-mongering … overblown and unhelpful to rational debate.”
These seem to be two different topics, but they are really just two different sides of the same coin.
First of all, we are not running out of bandwidth. One need only look at countries like South Korea which manages to support a large population with high speed internet connection. However, the difference between South Korea and say, America, is what is known as “the last mile.”
It’s all well and good getting high speed internet connections to each region, but getting it to each house is an entirely different matter. And that is what is freaking people out at the moment. They believe we need a new internet, when in reality we just need to get the internet past that last mile; from the ISP to the curb.
As for the supposed drop in growth? You have to remember that, at a certain point, we actually just run out of people to get the internet too. When the growth of the internet stops, that’ll just mean that everyone has access to it.
So while the internet may be in for repairs one day, and one of those fancy new “internets” created by scientists, for scientists, may take its place, for the moment, I’m perfectly happy with what we got. We’ll eventually run out of people.
Joshua Hill, a Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm.
