[medicvet]

Okay, I am pretty much an fng here, and please excuse me if this has been addressed specifically on this site before in this forums..but..

How will the aftereffects of PO affect the world wide web and the internet? How long do ya'll think the internet will last as a viable method of communication and sharing of knowlege of the masses? What effects will this begin to have on the net? How long will the public internet even last?

Any guesstimations or even rough estimates would be helpful for a variety of reasons, and not just to me I don't think.

[rogerhb]

1. The original idea of the internet was a mil comms network that would survive a nuclear war, routes can be found around dead sections if there is redundency in the network.

2. We still have the same capability, but the internet is effectively under the control of the countries that each subnet is in, and the connections between the subnets are carried over telcom providers cables/fibers.

3. If you are hit by blackouts other parts will happily go on, but not be able to talk to you, however major war will certainly sever internation links.

4. Email is quite resilient, if you can upload your email to your local ISP then it will do best efforts to forward it, however if the machine that your email is on at any particular time, it will be lost until that machine is recovered.

5. The domain name system is distributed and is similarly robust in that the names are replicated across many servers.

6. Political interference, any gov could decide to pull the plug if it was in their interest, that would mainly just isolate that one country. Cyber-warfare is taken seriously by the military around the world.

[whereagles]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the internet can probably run on a fraction of what a single hydro plant produces.

[medicvet]

Thank you very much for the info! I hate to sound stupid..but I am also a strong believer in the old maxim that the only stupid question is the one not asked.

[turmoil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('medicvet', 'b')ut I am also a strong believer in the old maxim that the only stupid question is the one not asked.

[deconstructionist]

what's important is the infrastructure of the net, not the energy usage of the net... most internet traffic ends up passing through one of several major hubs at some point in its travels through the physical infrastructure of cyberspace. if things in the world in general begin to become volatile enough that the companies supporting the major hubs (i.e. HP's 4.2.2.2 dns server) can no longer operate said hubs, there will be service problems. i think it'll hold itself together, but there will most likely be more service outages and "no route to host" messages. it all depends on how the future unfolds, which we really can't predict...

[medicvet]

THAT is what my question was trying to get at!!!

I couldn't express it that well..but that is what was coalescing in my head..not whether the energy would be there..but how organized in the upcoming chaos of Peak Oil events things would be.


thanks!

[Omnitir]

I think as personal transport becomes less common because of fuel supply issues, we will see a large shift towards working from home online. It seems like a sensible PO strategy to limit commuting as much as possible, and the Internet will be a powerful tool in enabling us to do this.

I believe one day it will be of primary concern to maintain network integrity in order to maintain wide scale employment, just as today it’s of primary concern to maintain roads in order to maintain wide scale employment.

Any effective power-down/decentralisation attempt will require the Internet to be maintained effectively. I suspect we generally don’t appreciate just how important a technology the Internet, or son of the Internet, will turn out to be.

[gg3]

This topic was already discussed at length in another topic having virtually the same name.

It's really important for people especially newbies here, to look through the various categories & topics, and see if something has already been addressed or if a topic already exists.

Then make your posting in the EXISTING topic, don't start a NEW one to ask the SAME question. Posting in the existing topic will cause it to update and go into the "new" list so people will see it.

After a topic gets to about 10 pages maximum, THEN it's probably time to start a new topic as a continuation of the old one.

I'm starting to think we need some kind of moderator control over who gets to start new topics. As in, don't let someone start a new topic until they've been here a minimum of three months.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I really tire of seeing the information entropy of this place grow exponentially due to frankly crappy self-discipline on the part of so very very many people.

[deconstructionist]

while it doesn't really bother me that much to see old topics brought up again by new people, another messageboard i used to frequent had this to say about the subject of people not searching the board for their question before posing it again:

UTFSF

a prize for anyone who can tell me what that means...