By 2010, Internet Could Run Out of Capacity

Recently, I've read an interesting news about the internet and it says that by 2010, Internet could run out of capacity. Researchers showed that consumers and corporate use of the internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brownouts in 2 years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastracture.

A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Internet by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to $317 billion in new capacity, more than doulble what service providers plan to invest, according to the study by Nemertes Research LLC, an independent analysis firm. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to 5 years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said.

The findings of the study indicate that although core fiber and switching/routing resources will scale nicely to support virtually any conceivable user demand, internet access infrastracture specifically in North America will likely cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years.

The study suggests that demand for web applications such as streaming and interactive video, peer to peer file transfers and music downloads will accelerate, creating a demand for more capacity.

Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year and this exaflood is a positive development for internet users and businesses. An exabyte is 1 quintillion bytes of about 1.1 billion Gb. One Exabyte is the equivalent of about 50,000 years of DVD quality video.

Video has unleashed an explosion of Internet content and exaflood is generally not well understood and its investment implications not well-defined. The responsibility for keeping up with this growing demand lies with backbone providers and national policymakers.

I think, the very best thing to do for now is treasure what we have now like the internet which is very helpful in the business sector as well as to each of everyone of us who uses the internet as another way of communication.