Brownouts on the horizon: the Internet could run out of capacity in two years

[mandy]

Consumer and corporate use of the Internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, according to a study released Monday.

A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Internet by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to US$137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study, by Nemertes Research Group, an independent analysis firm. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said...

full article: http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/11/19/.../index.php

[mandy]

A related article:

In what appears to be something of a Catch-22, the internet will likely become a victim of its own popularity, slowing down to dial-up speed over the next few years, according to a study by Nemertes Research, a business technology consultancy.

By 2010, the proliferation of online video, which was made possible by high-speed broadband access, will cripple the internet, researchers believe.

"Users will experience a slow, subtle degradation, so it's back to the bad old days of dial-up," Nemertes President Johna Till Johnson told USA Today. "The cool stuff that you'll want to do will be such a pain in the rear that you won't do it."...

full article: http://imediaconnection.com/news/17417.asp

[mandy]

Related: AT&T warning the Internet will hit full capacity by 2010

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.

"The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today," he said. "In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today." ...

full article: http://www.news.com/2100-1034_3-6237715.html