June 18, 2007
Warnings of 'internet overload'
BBC Click investigates claims of the internet collapsing under pressure from the YouTube generation.
"As the flood of data across the internet continues to increase, there are those that say sometime soon it is going to collapse under its own weight. But that is what they said last year.
... Since 2003, the YouTube generation has been streaming video, and downloading gigabytes of data in one go.
"In one day, YouTube sends data equivalent to 75 billion e-mail", said Phil Smith, head of technology and corporate marketing at Cisco Systems.
"The network is growing up, is starting to get more capacity than it ever had, but it is a challenge.
"The real issue that people are going to face, and are already noticing at home, is that ISPs are starting to cut back on the bandwidth that is available to people in their homes," said Mr Thompson. "They call it bandwidth shaping.
"They do this because they have a limited capacity to deliver to 100 or 200 homes, and if everybody's using the internet at the same time then the whole thing starts to get congested. Before that happens they cut back on the heavy users."
... For decades the internet has kept pace with our demands on it. And demand continues to grow.
And the service providers will continue to insist that the net will survive, and the doomsayers will continue to insist that it is just about to collapse."
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