[MattSavinar]

I take the problem seriously but you know most people will say it's just ATT engaging in fear-mongering. Yeah, right! Like tens of millions of people can just keep posting gobs of high-bandwidth crapola to the net and think there's not eventually going to be a problem!

I figured I should pick your brain as you know about this sort of tech stuff:

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/90339

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd that's set to increase another 50 times between now and 2015.

[cube]

I smell bull sh!t.

You have to question what is the true motive of AT&T by posting this. Are they trying to bend public opinion in hopes of getting approval for political favors? *cough*

I do agree bandwidth usage has been growing robustly but that is normal for any system within it's infancy. Eventually everything must slow down. It is a fact of life for all systems.

1) some people say we have a bandwidth glut
2) some say a shortage
3) OTOH some argue A Bandwidth Glut Exists in the Long-Haul Market, But a Shortage Exists in the Metro.

take your pick......

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'I') smell bull sh!t.

[Ainan]

A transparent piece of propoganda by ISP's and other carriers to charge more for different content and monitor every 'consumer unit'.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

It's been going on for a while now. Just like many other industry's a few rich elite want to control it for profit. Hopefully in a decade or so it won't matter any more.

[Ferretlover]

A remote possibility: The Internet will crash in 2010? A Canadian newspaper, a few months back (the story is posted here somewhere), printed a story that the NAU was scheduled to become operative in May, 2010.
SSoo (putting on tin hat, and grabbing full-body shield), what if the net goes down around May, 2010-certainly would be handy for the changeover in that would be all over before the people could share the news!

[MattSavinar]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ainan', 'A') transparent piece of propoganda by ISP's and other carriers to charge more for different content and monitor every 'consumer unit'.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

It's been going on for a while now. Just like many other industry's a few rich elite want to control it for profit. Hopefully in a decade or so it won't matter any more.

[Aaron]

Ummm no.

This is just more net neutrality jockeying for position.

The exact same argument was made a decade ago.

ATT just wants Uncle Sam to pass legislation which will be profitable for them.

Need more bandwidth?

Lay more fiber.

Solved.

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MattSavinar', 'Y')ou can't have any system of anything grow at this exponential of
a rate and NOT have the thing begin collapsing in on itself. (Law of diminishing returns)

[Kingcoal]

I worked for Lucent Optoelectronics division in the late nineties, so I have some insight. The problem back then for outfits like Nortel and Lucent was that there wasn't enough demand for bandwidth. As of the year 2000, most of the optical fiber which had been laid was dark. During the late nineties, some companies went nuts, laying fiber like crazy. At the same time, companies like Lucent where working on DWDM and figuring out how to wring 100 Gbits/sec out of a single fiber. We used to talk all the time about the "last mile" problem, which is the fact that the data connections to homes and businesses where very slow. In fact, my boss quit and started his own company to produce optical networking equipment for the last mile market. Where I live in the Lehigh Valley was being called "Silicon Valley East," because there were so many startups working on optical networking products.

It all went bust, though. As of 2001, most people were still using dialup so there wasn't much demand to invest in making the internet backbone faster. Lucent broke the Microelectronics division into Agere Systems; probably one of the biggest spinoff flops in history. There simply wasn't enough of a bandwidth problem back then with the internet. The problem was that we were ahead of the times.

I think the problem is one of simple economics. People want speed, but they don't want to pay for it. The whole reason why we were trying to get so much data through a single fiber is that lease costs for those fibers were high.

[jdumars]

Ugh... the misinformation.

First, the Internet is already constrained by whatever the slowest/least-capacity piece of equipment between you and whatever you are accessing is. In most cases, this is the border router between you and the ISP. Aggregated bandwidth usage for AT&T could very well be pushing the line/router/switch capacity in certain network segments during peak times even now. Contrary to popular belief this does not, and cannot "crash the Internet." What it does cause is high levels of latency as the process run queue for equipment becomes overloaded. Yes, whatever you are trying to get to will be slower, and potentially unavailable if session-close variables are exceeded on any in-line layer 3/4 device, but for most common types of packet TTL, this is 5 minutes. That'd be a LOT of latency.

Second, there are all sorts of QOS/packet inspection algorithms already in place on network equipment throughout the net. There is absolutely NO restriction on this, legal or otherwise. And, it's a good thing. Imagine if ISPs did not restrict or block ICMP (ping) traffic. Any aspiring kiddie-script hacker could setup some Linux boxes and run the following shell script which could potentially bring a router to its knees:

########
#!/bin/bash

while : ; do
nohup ping -f some.router.comcast.net &
done
########

Now, the crux of their argument is probably that in order to maintain current levels of capacity, massive investment is needed -- and this is absolutely true. There is a limited amount of bandwidth available. There is also limited storage capacity on the backend for things like logs, packet captures, etc.

So, no, the Internet is not going to "crash." But, without significant increases in infrastructure spending, it will get progressively more congested and slower.

[MattSavinar]

meant to say "You tube used as much in 2007 as the whole net did in 2000"

[steam_cannon]

Well sounds like we've got that all cleared up. Now I'm getting back to
destroying the internet...

[Novus]

More than half the internet is porn and the rest it being taken over by youtube and myspace. The internet represents the highest point of human knowledge ever assembled but look at how we abuse it.

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', 'M')ore than half the internet is porn and the rest it being taken over by
youtube and myspace. The internet represents the highest point of
human knowledge ever assembled but look at how we abuse it.

[Ayoob]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', 'M')ore than half the internet is porn and the rest it being taken over by youtube and myspace. The internet represents the highest point of human knowledge ever assembled but look at how we abuse it.

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', 'I')magine if you could download beer!