The Internet may be "full" by 2010

[dbldee]

According to a recent study, the internet is approaching capacity and more than $55 billion or more than 70 % than what is planned by the ISPs may be required for additional capacity.

http://eConsumersearch.com/news.html
If this is so, these costs are going to be passed on to users..
More wireless devices are coming on line..
fees for email ???
bandwidth usage etc

The increase use of audio/video demands more bandwidth

Shall we be prepared for this as inevitable?

[felgall]

The same thing could be said 10 years ago. Computer capacity is growing at a fast enough rate that by the time 2010 gets here there will be at least as much spare capacity percentage wise as there is now.

[The Old Sarge]

Suppose the limited capacity causes people/devices to fall off-line. (Not likely, but just suppose.)

It's kind of like supply and demand. When demand surpasses supply (or availability), then the unserviced demand falls off. People/devices may have to wait in line to get ON line. (You Brits may prefer "waiting on QUE to get on LINE.) ;)

Same sort of thing applies to the fees. If enough people refuse to pay and just drop off (not likely), the fees disappear.

[dbldee]

The same thing could be said 10 years ago. Computer capacity is growing at a fast enough rate that by the time 2010 gets here there will be at least as much spare capacity percentage wise as there is now.

The problem as interpreted from the article, is bandwith
More is needed than expected

The responses came from people actually working in the industry

More people, appliances coming on-line, may supply the needed revenue, but at the same time they use more of the resources.
The old sarge has some interesting observations

[toicontien]

And yet necessity is the mother of all invention. We need more bandwidth, therefore we will develop new methods of transmitting data. This also brings to mind whether or not spare bandwidth in a community will become a commodity that cities can use as bargaining chips for attracting businesses and residents. The bandwidth that will become overloaded is the cross-region bandwidth, that being cross-country and trans-global. Maybe some less populous Midwestern and Plains states in the U.S.A., for instance, will have a surplus of bandwidth while the east and west coast states get bogged down. The networks within these less populous states would be much quicker, and the slowdown coming from data outside that more regional or local network.

When, not if, bandwidth becomes a commodity, I think it will cause the Internet to become more distributed and decentralized. The heart of our tech industry seems to lie in California and Texas. The tech industry might start to spread out of necessity. Then again, we might come up with better methods of transmitting data on the Internet, or developing new bandwidth technologies and this bandwidth shortage might not happen.

[toicontien]

Another thought too, is with handheld devices come smaller memory and processing capabilities, so they can't handle the Flash, JavaScript and image-bloated web. More hand held devices might mean more devices, but could mean less bandwidth and fewer HTTP requests simply because those machines aren't capable of the bandwidth intensive web that desktop computers can handle. Even if handheld devices support video, it will be video in a lower resolution, meaning less data needs to be transmitted. It also might mean devices could get smarter.

Let's say we've got IP TV, that being true video over the Internet. Everyone gets home and hops online to watch their favorite shows --- whoops! The Internet is overloaded. Now everyone's video is choppy. ... Or maybe during the day and previous night, you tell your TV/media center which shows you want to watch and it prefetches them to your computer when the Internet isn't being used so much. Then you can get home and watch your prefetched programs.

A bandwidth shortage might also be solved by taking a clue from the real world. Perhaps this new bandwidth short Internet would be like this:

1) Mirrored sites are important, so there are multiple locations with the same data

2) The global network distributes data to national networks

3) These national networks distribute data to storage facilities in multiple regions.

4) The consumer connects to servers in these regional facilities to download their data. Much of the bandwidth intensive data comes from these regional facilities, freeing the national and global networks to handle mostly low bandwidth traffic and distributing high bandwidth data to regional storage facilities.

I think if you dig into the current Internet, many of these things are already implemented, just not used on a wide-spread basis.

[TJ111]

The internet is a series of tubes....

[toicontien]

Sorry for the multiple posts, but just look at the electricity industry in the U.S.A. Our power grid is only taxed during certain times of the day. The companies charge a premium per kilowatt hour during these peak times and charge a very small amount during low usage. If you have an electric dryer, dry your clothes at 2 in the morning. The price per kilowatt hour is probably half of what it is during peak usage times on the power grid.

The Internet could become the same thing. It's not that we have too much data to transmit, it's that we want to transmit too much data at once. The same problem exists on many roadways around the world. There aren't too few roads, just too many people that want to use the roads at one time. The easiest way to ease traffic congestion is to make sure not everyone is using the road at the same time.

[WebJoel]

I was still living in New York when AOL switched to 'unlimited useage' from their ridiculous 'first 5 hours free and 10-cents per minute thereafter' all for $29.99 per month. -There was a massive surge of use and virtual gridlock on the phone service for several days in the Rochester, NY area (the nearest 'node' for AOL at the time in that part of the state).
It was a virtual all-you-can-eat pig-fest! People were staying online for entire days & nights bulemia sessions! Fortunately, much improvement and less dial-up (but approx 50% of the U.S. still uses dial-up access, which is why we target the 8-seconds to live-or-die at 56KBS on web-site builds).

I'm still hopeful for new technologies that increase the range, decrease the power consumption, improved bandwidth, etc. More fibre optics in play for dial-up users, and of course, better-designed web sites that use less bloat, more semantic coding. This helps alot too.
Things change.

Look at satellite tv... 15 years ago it was over $4000.oo for a dish. Now, it's under $99.oo (and instead of a 14-foot diameter dish, it's more like 14-inches diameter and the focus is under 4-degrees of arc, so they can place satellites in closer orbits to have more of them for more content, more choice). Sometimes, FREE dish & equipment with sign-up for 1-year or more... I can only see improvements. I am not worried about a 'black monday' for internet...