Beware surfers: cyberspace is filling up

Posted by Kendall Harmon

Internet users face regular “brownouts” that will freeze their computers as capacity runs out in cyberspace, according to research to be published later this year.

Experts predict that consumer demand, already growing at 60 per cent a year, will start to exceed supply from as early as next year because of more people working online and the soaring popularity of bandwidth-hungry websites such as YouTube and services such as the BBC’s iPlayer.

It will initially lead to computers being disrupted and going offline for several minutes at a time. From 2012, however, PCs and laptops are likely to operate at a much reduced speed, rendering the internet an “unreliable toy”.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology

8 Comments
Posted April 30, 2009 at 2:32 pm [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. John Bowers wrote:

This sounds like the FUD coming from the telcos who simply want to be able to double charge for packets going across the internet (which they currently aren’t allowed to do). In other words, a packet is some small chunk of data that costs the same for the ISP to deliver as every other packet. They charge sites like YouTube a price per bandwidth to stay online, but now they want to charge them again if that packet happens to be a video packet rather than a web packet even though it makes no difference to their infrastructure. If they can’t handle the amount of bandwidth they are selling to YouTube they need to raise the price. Trying to get Congress to allow them to perform monopolistic extortion is ridiculous and I hope they fail miserably.

These guys are simply attempting to spread fear so that we-the-people will support them when they attack net neutrality (the notion that delivering 64 bytes of information should cost the same amount no matter what that information is). I’m not buying it in the least.

At least Google owns enough dark fiber to create its own net if it comes to it.

Also, what does the author mean by saying computers will jitter and freeze. No computer manufactured today will freeze simply because the internet is slow (I’ve just been using a USB modem from Africa for months and my computer never froze because of slow internet). The entire article is suspect, IMO.

April 30, 3:18 pm | [comment link]
2. John Bowers wrote:

More information: the article is sighting research by Nemartes who according to:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Internet-Ends-in-2010-89585

and elsewhere is funded by AT&T;who are at the forefront of anti-net neutrality.

April 30, 3:23 pm | [comment link]
3. libraryjim wrote:

http://shibumi.org/eoti.htm

April 30, 8:35 pm | [comment link]
4. Fr. Dale wrote:

#3. libraryjim,
Gee, I didn’t know I could win big bucks simply by clicking on the link you provided.
Mary had a lit t l e l a m   b

April 30, 10:34 pm | [comment link]
5. Fr. Dale wrote:

Oops, I guess it was “Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer do!” from HAL.

April 30, 10:38 pm | [comment link]
6. libraryjim wrote:

huh? Did someone change the page? It was supposed to lead to the last page of the internet.

The End of the Internet
Congratulations! This is the last page.
Thank you for visiting the End of the Internet. There are no more links.

You must now turn off your computer and go do something productive.

Go read a book, for pete’s sake.

April 30, 10:40 pm | [comment link]
7. Fr. Dale wrote:

#6. libraryjim,
Yes jim, after I won all the money, I changed it back to what you had. I didn’t want to disappoint you with your clever “end” thingy.

April 30, 10:49 pm | [comment link]
8. libraryjim wrote:

great, now the ‘surprise’ is spoiled for others just coming into the thread.


lol

April 30, 11:11 pm | [comment link]
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