How Would You Deal With A Global Bandwidth Crisis? 478
lopy writes "First Google claimed the internet infrastructure won't scale to provide an acceptable user experience for online video. Then some networking experts predict that a flu pandemic would bring the internet to it's knees and lead to internet rationing. We used to think that bandwidth would always increase as needed, but what would happen if that isn't the case? How would you deal with a global bandwidth shortage? Would you be willing to voluntarily limit your internet usage if necessary? Could you live in a world without cheap and plentiful broadband internet access?"
My answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple, I wouldn't put up with it. I would demand that they make technologies that do scale. With all the breakthroughs that we've seen lately in storage, CPU power and bandwidth on I2, I just can't believe these kind of statements. These kind of fear tactics I believe are meant to help drive up the price of bandwidth when people are driving it down.
No Chance (Score:2, Insightful)
GET STUFFED! I moved to the boonies and put up with dialup for 2 weeks, then satelite for 6 months till I finally got on the supernet.
You can pry my bandwidth from my cold dead hands!
Self-limiting congestion (Score:5, Insightful)
Did 9/11 choke the Internet? I'd say that was a heck of a lot more of an immediate go-to-your-computer-for-news crisis...
I'd do the same thing I always have (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not going to happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously...this is a pretty lame attempt at a "What if" scare-tactic article!
there's no crisis (Score:5, Insightful)
if it is true that the internet won't scale in the scenarios outlined above, it won't scale only in a specific context: the context of bps hungry applications
ok: so you won't be able to watch the latest youtube laugh video. whoop de friggin doo
you'll still be able to communicate, plain text emails, simple html pages, etc.
in other words, applications that use very little bandwidth, that, until a few years ago, was more than satisfactory for our requirements, will do just fine
no MMORPG, no video, maybe no audio: oh well
remember: the internet was originally conceived to survive a nuclear strike
i think the internet (as we need it, maybe not as we want it) will survive youtube + WoW + bittorrent + huge spam hordes, or the Flu Armageddeon Telecommute Scenario (tm), just fine
Get rid of all spammers (Score:5, Insightful)
(Of course, I favor doing this today, regardless of any crisis.)
More important things to worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd do the same thing I always have (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'd do the same thing I always have (Score:2, Insightful)
"Global bandwidth crisis" is a crock (Score:2, Insightful)
There can only meaningfully be a bandwidth issue between the endpoints of a transaction.
Re:My answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Shhh. not so loud. Do you realize what might happen if people thought about how fearmongering, in the form of rediculous "what if?" scenarious, is used to influence the barely concious masses? Next you're going to tell me that it might be better to have the evening news present stories about serious issues, instead of the human interest stories that help soothe our fragile populace. You Sir, are a Menace.
Re:"Global bandwidth crisis" is a crock (Score:5, Insightful)
You're thinking about it wrong here. When you are talking about Internet transit, you are talking about shipping your packets all over the world. Services like that are productized in all corners of the marketplace, and services cost money just like physical products. In the case of Internet transit, you're paying for a certain number of packets per second (often expressed as "bandwidth" allotment in a contract) to pass through a gateway, and usually in a residential service relationship, you are paying for a maximum performance with no set guarantees or dedicated services.
How do people get these concepts so wrong is beyond me.
Global bandwidth crisis? oh the horror. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My answer (extended) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Global bandwidth crisis" is a crock (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhhh actually I don't know about you, but sometimes it would take me hours to be able to log in due to busy signals at the modem banks, so yeah, I guess there was a bandwidth shortage.
Re:My answer (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd start selling bandwidth.
Re:"Global bandwidth crisis" is a crock (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. How many people cuold connect to a BBS running a 300 baud modem? How many times was a modem not downloading at it's optimal spped? Bandwidth shortage!
Doesn't mean it wasn't fixable, you that technology wouldn't evolve, but at that moment it was a bandwidth shortage. I mean come on, I had only so long to download topless pictures of the Barbi twins!
its 15 mpg not 9, dumb ass.
Re:How would I deal with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"Global bandwidth crisis" is a crock (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think you should pay for bandwidth anyways (Score:4, Insightful)
All fixed costs. NOCs, and the lines between them, cost $X in overhead whether they push 5Kb or 5Pb per day. The actual use costs nothing (except perhaps electricity, but even then, virtually all modern signalling protocols preferentially use electrically-off states).
Now factor in the requirement for spares, peering agreements, FIX fees, necessary support contracts from the hardware vendors
With the exception of peerage, which I mentioned (and for end users, basically means paying your ISP bill), the rest just amounts to overhead. Same no matter how much traffic you have, up to your peak capacity. You can try to inflate the numbers however you want, but they still stay flat with respect to throughput when you factor in everything above you.
This is such horseshit.
Really, now? So, which tier-1 do you work for, that you wish to justify your profits?
The internet amounts to one big LAN, divided into a bunch of fiefdoms with petty little corporate barons charging fees at every drawbridge and intersection. Take away all the troll bridges, and you end up with fees based on the overhead (hardware and human maintenance) for a given capacity, totally uncorrelated with actual throughput.
Re:How would I deal with it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bogus Bandwidth Crisis: Declared DOA (Score:2, Insightful)
WMD and Terrorism so they can invade whatever country they want.
Oil crises, so they can up the gas price whenever they want.
Time crises by inventing silly deadlines, so they can feel in control of project scope.
And now Bandwidth, so they can find a way to charge for the net.
Next it will be cd plastic shortage crisis, so music goes up in price... Oh wait...
They Lie and Lie... and then Lie some more. I call Bullshit.
There's plenty of dark fibre around, it's dirt cheap to lay more, at least when you amortize it against its utility.
This is just a pathetic attempt to astroturf someones corporate or political genda.
I wouldn't piss on them, if they were on fire...
Re:"Global bandwidth crisis" is a crock (Score:5, Insightful)
When they all jumped into the same market at the same time, they created an oversupply, or what has been euphemistically called as laying a lot of dark fibre, a huge amount of it in fact, this B$ about having filled all the dark fibre is just marketing hype and trying to force up the price.
Especially as technology has marched ahead and has allowed a lot more traffic to pass down the exact same fibres, except of course those dark ones ;-). As for live TV streams, they can be cut back to near nothing, with effective caching at the ISP level (don't send hundreds of thousands of streams over seas, send one and cache/mirror locally for re-distribution).
There you go, a brand new patentable business opportunity, automatic local caching/mirroring of offshore/long range streams, to reduce bandwidth/traffic costs.
Re:"Global bandwidth crisis" is a crock (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We already live in a world (country) without... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!
The government needs to do the same thing they did with electricity to the internet. Mandate it. No company will ever want to distribute high speed access to everywhere in the nation. But it is something that is increasingly needed as an infrastructure for the future of the nation itself. Just like phone service and electricity before it, quality, reliable, high speed, low latency connection to the internet needs to be deployed across the nation by government mandate if need be.
The businesses all cry foul the second a city or township tries to deploy their own public owned network for their citizens and suddenly finds the money to go running *cough* buying *cough* Congress or State legislation, money that never seems to be there to actually build their own networks, but sure enough it is available whenever/wherever some town tries this.
I truly believe that internet access should be simply just another utility, like water, and electricity already.
Re:"Global bandwidth crisis" is a crock (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't imply that... his post absolutely reeked of it. I was just pointing out that his SUVs-are-environmentally-harmful point was the end of the psychological progression for him, rather than (as he would have us believe) the starting point of his condemnation of those who drive them.
Re:morning of 9-11 (Score:1, Insightful)
As I remember that day, it was a bad day for pretty much everybody.
Ask someone who lives outside a city... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hell, half the time my house gets a decent thunderstorm we're likely to lose mains power for an hour or so.
Not complaining, so much as pointing out that there are people out there who already do without BitTorrent, Google Video, YouTube, et cetera et cetera, but still find the Internet to be useful.