Research firm says planned internet capacity upgrades will fall 60% short by 2010
By Nilay Patel 
posted November 20th 2007 9:23PM
posted November 20th 2007 9:23PM
A new study published by the Nemertes Research Group indicates that demand for bandwidth will outstrip capacity by 2010 -- and that planned infrastructure upgrades will fall some 60-70 percent short of making up the difference. Using a model it claims anticipates the next bandwidth-consuming innovation, Nemertes says that carriers and other infrastructure providers will have to spend at least an additional $42B over the estimated $72B it estimates is currently budgeted to prevent the bandwidth crunch from taking place -- but we're a little unclear on where those numbers are coming from, so don't start running your cable modem on overdrive just yet. Either way, it looks like network scaling is something we'll all be affected by over the next few years -- unless the shame of watching people make fools of themselves on YouTube is finally too much and we move to the beach for good.[Via Physorg]
Naw, they will have reversed engineered some more alien technology by then. We're cool.
How can you be sure? How can you be sure?
Must... download... all... porn .... on ... internet... now!!!
*Runs out to buy external hard drives*
As long as I can get 4.3Gb 720p MKV's in an hour or two I'll be fine
Can you even tell the difference between HD and SD anime? I'm asking seriously; I don't know. It would seem to me that a less compressed, lower-resolution anime would look better than highly compressed HD anime.
On topic, though, I think you already can. Let's round it to 4 GB, or 32 Gb. This means you need a 16 Gb/hr minimum connection. This works out to 16/3600, or a 4.5 Mb/s connection - very doable. In fact, many people have a cable connection this fast. I have a fast connection and can download 2 700 MB DivX videos in 20-30 minutes (about 1.3 MB/s or 11 Mb/s)
I wasn't talking about anime, when did I mention anime??
HD looks so much smarter that SD when it comes to movies like LotR, Transformers etc. So much so I'm taking HD for granted now, and I'm seeing DVDrips or R5s the same way as I previously saw a good TS or a TC. BTW all bluray/hddvd movie rips are compressed to DVD5 or DVD9 in .MKV
Sorry, I just normally associate mkv with anime.
But did they take into account the drop in bandwith demand as the world population starts to decline due to increased natural disasters (thanks to global warming) and diminishing fresh water supplies? It'll balance out by 2015 and we'll be back to sharing pr0n at lightning speeds.
is there a way to horde/stockpile bandwidth?
In underground chambers, duh!
Ted Stevens was right! Oh Shi-
The sky is falling... haven't heard that one before.
So thats why cablevision has limited my bandwidth, again... its all in 'preparation' for the great bandwidth drought of 2010.
There's nothing to fear, as 64kb ought to be enough for anybody.
This is the best use of that quote, yet. Mostly because it's used out of context, which makes it awesome.
You have just won 64 internets for the best engadget comment ever.
If only companies like AT&T would have spent the money they were given by the government for broadband like they were supposed to instead of somehow wasting it all, and still charging us ridiculous prices for slow speeds.
Telecom Act of 1996 for the... Loss. :(
It is worth noting that the study was partially funded by the Internet Innovation Alliance, which draws an undisclosed amount of support from the telecom industry.
shucks! I will only be able to stream porn in 720p quality not 1080i, a bleak future Marty.
Wrong.
1080i=560 lines/frame
720p=720 lines/frame
720p takes more bandwidth
It more depends on the framerate than the standard.
@thethirdmoose
Wrong.
Assuming both are using 16:9 ratio, the lines on 1080i are wider then those of 720p.
1280x720 = 921600 pixels
1920x540 = 1036800 pixels
Assuming same framerate and compression of course.
Therefore kuade was right, 1080i uses more bandwidth then 720p
@Zarifus:
Damn.
Good point.
Those numbers are so high O_o I don't believe it.
I doesn't help with all these stupid VOIP adding to the bandwidth issues!
I use TeamSpeak. Is i evil too?
And that's why we need service providers to take action and start providing differents levels of service for certain traffic profiles. I have a problem when 65%+ of Internet traffic across Tier1's today are all P2P traffic.
Guess how much bandwidth it would use if it wasn't p2p...
What's going to happen first? Are we going to run out of bandwidth, or fossil fuel?
I moved to the beach.
Dialup.
Oh, I still remember when 56k was cool enough for your neighbors :)
true, we should all go back to 56k. -Bent Cardan
Oh yeah, BTW, I wanted to point out something that has happened to me lately. Since there're those gigantic, to say the least, apple adds in your posts, firefox has been crashing a lot, specially when I open two or more permalinks. The problem persists in my XP partitions in both Firefox and IE (in THREE PCs), in FF and IE in Vista, and in my linux machine with FF and konkeror. Even with the restore session function it's really annoying.
I use firefox's ad block to eliminate all their ads
An excuse to jack OUR interenet rates. With $4 dollar gas on the horizon, more people will want to work at home. $20-$50 a month for internet is seen as too cheap by telcos... considering you SUV costs $100 to fill up now.
just imagine how fast the Internet would be if they spent the 100 some billion to improve the infastructure (that is the cost of 2-3 mos. of the Iraq war)
People always compare the 2 trillion spent on the Iraq war, but that was to protect our freedom. And guess what? Its gone. So that means another 100 billion witch the USA can hardly afford anyway.
I remember years ago, predictions of running out of IPs, backbone routers melting down from all the traffic, the Net was doomed. Today I'm more worried about things like access tiering.
The problem isn't who will lay the fat pipes but rather who is going to control them.
> Guess how much bandwidth it would use if it wasn't p2p...
Uhhhh, the same? The same number of bits still come down the tube.
Meh, you guys are all lucky and spoilt on your internet bandwidth. Here in Indonesia, getting 40-50kbps is the limit. Oddly enough, there are no other ISPs around, and the one we have is called Speedy internet
Lucky lucky lucky people
Peak Bandwidth! Peak Bandwidth!
This along with the whole net neutrality issue will lead us back to metered pricing. Why shouldn't people who use the service more pay more?
Hi All,
Just wanted to let everyone know that we've made our report freely available on our web site - http://www.nemertes.com/, there's also a FAQ explaining the research methodology.
Thanks for the feedback/comments.
Irwin
Check this out...
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2007/11/20/suckered-by-astroturf/