U.S. Broadband Infrastructure to Reach Maximum Capacity by 2010

[Ret10Echo]

Thought this article was interesting. I was wondering if some of the more tech-savvy folks might have an opinion on this. Of course I question the motives of any organization that is associated with the industry that they urge investors to put billions of dollars into.


November 26, 2007

U.S. Broadband Infrastructure to Reach Maximum Capacity by 2010

By Anuradha Shukla, TMCnet Contributing Editor


Nemertes Research recently predicted that the broadband infrastructure in the United States will reach maximum capacity by 2010. The study says that the system will collapse because of this overload, but, more importantly, says the situation is inevitable unless there is a 60 to 70 percent increase in investment in broadband infrastructure.

The report, titled, The Internet Singularity, Delayed: Why Limits in Internet Capacity Will Stifle Innovation on the Web, says that, although the dynamic nature of the Internet will prevent a total breakdown, users will experience “Internet brownouts,” which are defined as periods of low connectivity speeds. According to Nemertes Research, the situation will definitely hurt innovation on the Internet — a lack of reliability of connection speeds, will likely mean another Google or YouTube will have difficulty making inroads.

The study points out that the lack of investment could be holding back the time at which the internet reaches a ‘singularity’ (a point at which accelerating change creates an unpredictable outcome, such as the Internet becoming independently sentient). Nemertes Research expects the corporate and personal demand for Internet connectivity to grow exponentially during the next two years.

Nemertes estimates that the financial investment required by access providers to bridge the gap between demand and capacity ranges from $42 billion to $55 billion, or roughly 60-70 percent more than service providers currently plan to invest.

[LongWire]

Will read it when I have more time, but its not surprising. Just another freedom we Americans take for granted. We can be assigned up to 7 IP addresses given your provider, people in China are up to 32 people per IP Address, yes it is China, but it still says alot. Internet Brownouts, yeah somethings going to have to give.

[Kyobanim]

The problem is no one that runs these companies pays attention.

When I was building infrastructure at client sites for Road Runner prior to 9/11, we were overbuilding at an average of 50%. Anotherwords, we would build out for a 25% population base penetration for the affiliate and then lay down an additional 50% of dark fiber for future growth. Obviously, this only impacted the local affiliate. Your local broadband providers have plenty of local infrastructure. I would venture to say that the dark fiber that the affiliates owns is still dark.

The problem now is the backbone providers. During that time period there were 25 or 30 providers. That number has shrunk to almost half because of buyouts, mergers, ect. When these things happened the companies consolidated their operations.

Fastforward ahead 5 years. Transport requirements have exploded. Online gaming, VOIP, movies on demand, etc. All of these things have been predicted for years but the people that make decisions on infrastucture DIDN'T PAY ATTENTION. Too many of them called bullshit or didn't want to make the expenditure on a guess. Kinda like road construction. They wait until capacity on a road is exceeded, then they build more road but by the time they finish building the new road, capacity is already exceeded. An expensive game of catchup.

And that's what Level 3, Peer 1, ATT, Verison and the rest of the providers are doing right now. Playing catchup. I doubt they ever will.

[3SoldierDad]

Originally Posted by Ret10Echo

Thought this article was interesting. I was wondering if some of the more tech-savvy folks might have an opinion on this.

Nope, baloney....

With some of the gee-wiz stuff coming down the pike we'll have bandwidth coming out the wazoo. On the East Coast, you'll see fiber to the home in three or four years. The pipeline for compression technologies and bandwidth management software is huge.

Like Y2K, IMO, this is another technology cry of wolf


Three Soldier Dad...Chuck

[kgoerz]

Is it going to effect Porn

Seriusly you have to wonder how much traffic it will handle.

[GratefulCitizen]

Originally Posted by Ret10Echo

Of course I question the motives of any organization that is associated with the industry that they urge investors to put billions of dollars into.

These rapid ramp-ups leave many opportunities for "clever" accounting.

A coworker of mine (during one of my former jobs) had one of Worldcom's accounts (this was in 2001).
The rapid pace of new/disconnect/change orders left a tangled mess out of the status of over 20,000 PVC's (permanent virtual connections).

This was just one account.

[Sionnach]

There's still quite a bit of dark fiber out there, and I still see AT&T (BellSouth) laying more fiber whilst driving around Georgia.

The biggest bottlenecks I deal with occur at the peering points, and I don't see that changing. Sure, IP addresses are a concern, but there are solutions for that using RFC1918 space and NAT. It's not ideal, but it works. The "real" solution is IPv6.

China is way ahead of the US in IPv6 deployments. I'd wager this is due to them building a new infrastructure, having a much larger population, and that some engineers don't like IPV6 because it includes too much crap (IPSec) instead of just keeping IP small and extending it with additional protocols.

I'm not worried. Business depends on the flow of information, and they will not tolerate failures in information flow. Greed is a powerful motivator.