Internet to go down in 2010?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 25 November 2007 16:55

Opinion and Analysis

A new report from the Nemertes Research Group has studied the Internet’s infrastructure and analyzed usage patterns to predict that Internet usage by consumers and corporations could ‘outstrip network capacity’ worldwide in just over two years, requiring massive financial investment. Will the Internet survive?
In what the Nemertes Research Group are calling the first independent study on the Internet’s infrastructure and capacity, their shocking conclusion is that an ‘Internet Exaflood’, capable of bringing down the Net, could tsunami across the world in 2010.

Just as shocking is the prediction that a massive US $137 billion is required to to be spent globally to keep the quality of service levels where they are today and hopefully continually improving, instead of slowly declining.

Of course, US $137b is just a drop in the bucket compared to the reported US $1.5 trillion spent on the ‘war against terror’, so hopefully the world remembers to put a few dollars aside to make sure the web still works when even more people, and more devices, are straining the Internet’s infrastructure as never before over the next couple of years.

Nemertes say that US $42 billion to US $55 billion needs to be spent in the U.S. alone, providing broadband access capacity, while is a very suprising 60-70% “above and beyond” what Nemertes says is an already allocated US $72 billion to be spent on upgrades.

Larry Irving, the co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance in the US said that: “This groundbreaking analysis identifies a critical issue facing the Internet – that we must take the necessary steps to build out network capacity or potentially face Internet gridlock that could wreak havoc on Internet services. It’s important to note that even if we make the investment necessary between now and 2010, we still might not be prepared for the next killer application or new internet-dependent business like Google or YouTube. The Nemertes study is evidence the exaflood is coming.”

The Nemertes report notes that today’s rich media applications are fuelling the demand for bandwidth, and say that: “voice and bandwidth-intensive applications such as streaming and interactive video, peer-to-peer file transfer and music downloads and file sharing are redefining the Internet”, and that “nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video in May and viewed more than 8.3 billion video streams, according to research by comScore”.

In addition, the report states that: “wireless devices such as cell phones, Blackberrys and gaming accessories provide consumers ever-increasing access to the Internet, exponentially accelerating consumption of Internet bandwidth”.

The report states that without action, “the Internet’s capacity will not likely accommodate user demand”, and that increasingly frequent Internet “brownouts” or “interruptions to the applications” we’ve all become accustomed to using online.

They state that it could “take more than one attempt to confirm an online purchase or it may take longer to download the latest video from YouTube. Overall, the impact of this inadequate infrastructure will be primarily to slow down the pace of innovation. The next Amazon, Google or YouTube might not arise -- not from a lack of user demand, but because of insufficient infrastructure preventing applications and companies from emerging”.

The report is available free of charge in full at the Nemertes site after free registration.