Video Road Hogs Stir Fear of Internet Traffic Jam

[groovedaddy]

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 as they traverse 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?”

But the Internet traffic surge represents more a looming challenge than an impending catastrophe. Even those most concerned are not predicting a lights-out Internet crash. An individual user, they say, would experience Internet clogging in the form of sluggish download speeds and frustration with data-heavy services that become much less useful or enjoyable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/technology/13net.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1205424014-Clr1/SeltQUqy7u3AeD5Fg

[flamin lib]

1. Yeah, and in 1870 it was predicted that at the then-current growth rate

of traffic in the cities horse manure would soon fill every available corner of space in major metropolitan areas.

Techonlogy has a way of taking care of technology.

Now, if we could just design and build it HERE . . .