End of the Internet

For months there has been a rising concern about the surging growth in the amount of data flying across the internet. The threat according to some industry groups, analysts and researchers, stems mainly from the increasing visual richness of online communication and entertainment - video clips and movies, social networks and multiplayer games. Moving images take far more bandwidth than normal sounds and data. These images are hefty rivers of digital bits as they traverse the internet gateways and pipes. According to a study, last year a social networking site consumed as much bandwidth as the entire internet did in 2000.

According to a report, a research firm projected that user demand for the internet could outpace network capacity by 2011. The title of a debate scheduled next month at a technology conference in the Boston sums up the angst: “The end of the internet?" But the internet traffic surge represents more a looming challenge than catastrophe. Even those most concerned are not predicting a lights-out internet crash. Heavy traffic in the internet may lead to heavy delays and sloe downloads. According to researchers the internet will not collapse, but there will be a growing class of stuff that we will not be able to do online. But among this bad news there is good news too, and that is the technology for handling such massive internet traffic is advancing at an impressive pace as well.