According to research that's supposed to be published later this year, growing demand for Internet use will soon outstrip the stamina of the infrastructure supporting it, and the Internet will cease to be reliable by 2012. Complete anarchy will ensue, and the world will essentially end along with the Internet we created for it. Perhaps this is what the Mayan prophecies meant?
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Member since:2009-05-01
It's not the engineers or the engineering I worry about, but the managers and other "suits" that make the decisions based only on dollars an not on what the engineers say.
I used to work for a major telecom equipment provider, and even well before the dot-com bust, it was becoming harder and harder to convince and sell the service providers additional infrastructure as it was seen as cutting into their profit margins. Never mind the higher costs to play catch up, or bad PR due to outages, etc. I can't even imagine what it's like in today's economy and the even more obscene quest for short term gains verses long term growth and stability. All hail the almighty dollar!
I agree with you that the network of 2012 will not be (or had better not be) the same network of 2009. I recall reading (a while ago) that the capacity of the fiber network was capable of doubling ever 9 months over the existing fiber! So by 2012, the network could move 8 times the data just by keeping endpoints updated. The amount of dark fiber available seems to be a well guarded secret, but now seems the time to start lighting it up, in addition of putting in more.
The original report seems to be a poorly written attempt at FUD to enable ISP's enacting band caps and fee increases verses expending capital to improve infrastructure.
Member since:
2006-01-11
In electronic circuit design, for a long time there have been looming walls, meaning that fundamental changes have needed to be made to keep Moore's Law on track. At any given time, you can correctly say that if changes aren't made we'll be hosed in 3-5 years. But a lot of engineers work very hard to come up with solutions, and we keep on shrinking that silicon.
Likewise, if the big network providers make no changes we'll be completely screwed by 2012. But the engineers in those companies can see that coming, too, so the Internet of 2012 will in someways look different from the Internet of 2009, probably just different enough to push the drop-dead date out a few more years.