No Waders Needed

April 15, 2008 at 8:16 pm Leave a comment

I’ve commented before, here and also here, about P2P traffic, net neutrality, and broadband ISPs.

Nate Anderson at Ars Technica has a long, detailed, but very comprehensive post concerning the Internet and capacity concerns, including whether the Internet will crash due to a catastrophic “exaflood” of data.

He interviews Andrew Odlyzko, of the Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota. I met Andrew some years ago, and he is as authoritative as they come on the Internet.

For those lacking the time, here are the Cliff Notes:

To paraphrase author William Gibson, Internet capacity is more than adequate, it’s just not evenly distributed.
Upstream bandwidth from consumers is the key bottleneck, but gradually the ISPs will be forced to make their networks more symmetric.
While it’s true a small minority consume the majority of local bandwidth (hello, ever hear of Pareto’s rule?) it turns out it’s not always the same minority.
There’s as least as much politics in the Net Neutrality debate as there is business. Or science.

While the concept was not discussed in the article, I still maintain that in the absence of competition, U.S. providers will begin moving to a pay-per-byte model as capacity strains in local networks increase. But this could change if the telcos and cable providers butt heads in more markets, or some form of wireless gains traction at scale.

Ultimately, populist politics and public opinion will continue to vie with telecableco lobbyists and PR experts before meaningful progress in the last mile occurs.

Anyone who really wants to gain a better understanding of this issue would be well served by reading the whole 4-page article.