Is the internet about to break?

[BuffaloX]

According to AT&T it is, unless huge investments are made to keep it going.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6237715.html

Is this just marketing, to persuade customers to use AT&T? :confused:

The internet has expanded at an explosive rate since the beginning, is it any different now? :confused:

[Mazza558]

The ISPs are too lazy to keep up with consumers' demands. It'll end up smacking them in the face when they get loads of complaints for poor quality services.

[Joeb454]

Apparently the internet has been "near breaking point" for about 7 years ;)

Though people are demanding more Bandwidth from ISP's and it's up to them to upgrade the "pipes" :)

[fatality_uk]

Unfortunately, in the UK dispite LLU, BT still has the end say in infrastructure upgrade to the public network. So we will be stuck with thier idea of "fast" broadband for another 5+ years

[macogw]

There's enough dark fiber out there...they just want to charge more money for bandwidth.

However, IPv6's multicasting could severely cut the amount of bandwidth needed to serve 1 file to millions of people...no more DDoS.

[verb3k]

In China and Japan, bandwidth already exceeds expectations, but there are two problems:
1. Some hard drives' write speeds can't cope with the huge amount of data poured on them.
2. The servers' bandwidth isn't as fast as the client's. (interesting :) )

[Darkhack]

I live in the United States and we got ripped off pretty bad. The telecoms basically stole $200 billion dollars (about $2000 per US household) and got away with it. You'd think that stealing that much money would cause someone to get arrested.

http://www.saschameinrath.com/2006jan31the_200_billion_broadband_scandal_aka_whe res_my_45mb_i_already_paid_for_it

[FuturePilot]

There's so much fiber out there, I don't think it's going to break. It comes down to the "Last Mile" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile)

[Joeb454]

Unfortunately, in the UK dispite LLU, BT still has the end say in infrastructure upgrade to the public network. So we will be stuck with thier idea of "fast" broadband for another 5+ years

Actually the Govt. approached BT sometime in the early 90's about providing the "Information Super Highway" a.k.a broadband, but said it would cost somewhere around £2-3 billion (I can't remember which). BT Agreed and thought of VoIP etc. but the Govt said "oh no you can't do that with it, others can though" So BT told them where to go ;)

And before you ask, my dad is the source, he's been a BT employee for nearly 20 years :)

[markp1989]

i live in the uk, and acording to aol, they tested my line and said that it can only handle a max connection speed of 1mb! i would kill to have 8mb but i dont own the line so i cant upgrade it

[Joeb454]

I'm lucky enough to have a total line length of 950m from the Telephone Exchange :)

[Az7]

Yes, back up the Internet to floppy disk.

[Joeb454]

Yes, back up the Internet to floppy disk.

Possibly one of the best replies I have ever seen :)

[insane_alien]

it wo't break, it'll just slow down to a crawl(god help those on 56k lines) and packet drop rates will be huge.

the internet will still work, just not very well.

this is assuming it reaches saturation and the telcos don't light up any of the dark fibre out there or lay down some more.

[Saint Angeles]

i don't think its gonna break... it'll prolly be more like a SNAP!

or possibly an explosion? implosion?

[Jackster]

I know how to break the internet right now. Whatever you do, don't type "Google" into Google

[Blue Heron]

the whole Internet will burn down in giant fireball.

It's like an overripe fruit, waiting that a breath of wind will take it down.

[klange]

I'm going to ignore everything in this thread and just jump straight to the point:
The Internet can't just "break".
An ISP can go down, even a tier-1 provider can lose its connection - but the Internet can not go down. We can, however, run out of space - which is why IPv6 was first implemented (the number of possible IP addresses in IPv6-space far exceeds the number of network-equipped machines that will ever be built, IPv4 only supports ~4,300,000,000, which is less than the number of people on Earth, and so doesn't really work well).

Being someone who runs a server hooked up to his home router I can say there is no way in hell the Internet can suddenly clapse - as long as I can get on my server from my laptop I'm on my own little slice of the Internet, and I don't see my router and my server crashing in some massive downfall of the Internet.

[mips]

There's enough dark fiber out there...they just want to charge more money for bandwidth.

However, IPv6's multicasting could severely cut the amount of bandwidth needed to serve 1 file to millions of people...no more DDoS.

+1

There is no shortage of fiber optic cable out there. Ever since the dot.com bubble burst the stuff has been lying dormant and not being used. Technologies like DWDM etc have actually increased fiber capacity a lot as well.

Router ports are probably not that freely available though but thats just Telcos&ISPs being cheapscapes.

The consumer is going to be ripped off again!

[dsiembab]

The internet is going to go wireless. Why do you think they are freeing up the airwaves. joking

[akiratheoni]

Look up 'net neutrality'... this is why telecoms want to take it away.

[macogw]

Look up 'net neutrality'... this is why telecoms want to take it away.

We're talking about net neutrality in class right now.

[atomkarinca]

The solution is simple: turn it off and then turn it back on.

[aimran]

What I don't get is ISPs offering unlimited download capacities, yet complain that sites offering streaming video (iPlayer etc) are eating up their bandwidth.

If you're offering unlimited downloads wouldn't you have the infrastructure to support streaming video already? The customer really can't download more than his speed allows: A customer on a 2MB line can only download 2 MB x 3600 seconds x 24 hours x 30 days = 5184 GB a month. Nothing more.

Hence ISPs complaining only leads us to believe that they're not really providing us our full quota. They're relying on the fact that not all of use the maximum bandwidth and hence cramming other users onto the unused bandwidth.

So if the internet breaks down you know who to blame.

[billgoldberg]

It made me think about that southpark episode where the "internets" died.

hahaha. Now that was funny.

On topic;

The internet isn't going to break. That's just bs.

Just add some more hardware and where good.

[Nezing]

aimran.I am on Virgin Media,and have a 10megabit download.But between 4pm-10pm,seven days a week,if you download over 300megabytes (yes,that number is correct),between those times,they re-set your clock (sounds painful :)),so your download and upload speeds slow to a crawl for five hours.They claim it is because of torrent sharing abuse.And they have spent billions on upgrading their infrastructure?

:confused:

[jrusso2]

Ten years ago the US government gave the telecoms and the ISP's billions of dollars to upgrade the backbone and they misused the money to raise their stock prices and never invested it in the backbone.

Now they are coming back asking for more money?

[aimran]

@Nezing:

300mb is painfully low! I hope they didn't advertise your package as unlimited. And what if you didn't use torrent, say download Ubuntu DVDs instead?

Either way, we're getting short-changed. The current complain of users using up more bandwidth than they can supply shouldn't hold since almost everyone subscribes to packages that offer unlimited downloads.

This is the same problem with the abuse of Fiat money. Too many promises made on too little assets.

[BuffaloX]

it wo't break, it'll just slow down to a crawl(god help those on 56k lines) and packet drop rates will be huge.

the internet will still work, just not very well.

this is assuming it reaches saturation and the telcos don't light up any of the dark fibre out there or lay down some more.

This is what I think is closest to the truth.
How much slowdown is required to call it break?

[mips]

What I don't get is ISPs offering unlimited download capacities, yet complain that sites offering streaming video (iPlayer etc) are eating up their bandwidth.

If you're offering unlimited downloads wouldn't you have the infrastructure to support streaming video already? The customer really can't download more than his speed allows: A customer on a 2MB line can only download 2 MB x 3600 seconds x 24 hours x 30 days = 5184 GB a month. Nothing more.

Hence ISPs complaining only leads us to believe that they're not really providing us our full quota. They're relying on the fact that not all of use the maximum bandwidth and hence cramming other users onto the unused bandwidth.

So if the internet breaks down you know who to blame.

ISPs want content providers to pay them for carrying their data on the ISPs network, they want to make more money. This is part & parcel of the net neautrality thing as well.

[derekr44]

zomg u broked teh intarwebnet

[ibuclaw]

Ha! Nice Costume derek!

I think that this gives an opportunity for companies to milk at it.

I swear I remember reading somewhere that because of gravity, 8Mb Broadband is virtually impossible, unless your house just so happens to be situated directly above or below your service provider.