AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: vijay gill [vgill () vijaygill com]
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 9:36 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: ip
Subject: Re: [IP] AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010

A very simple exercise is to do the following:

look at the historic rate of growth speed of writing storage media, bus bandwidth in hosts, and extrapolate at twice 
that for three years. The Entire Internet (capitalization mine), is a lot of bandwidth, mostly generated by a very 
large fleet of spindles and CPUs and busses to move between NICs and spindles. Assuming 20 households will generate 
that seems....unwarranted. I assume there is a reason Mr. Cicconi is VP of legislative affairs, and not say, VP of 
Network Engineering.

/vijay


On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 5:50 PM, David Farber <dave () farber net<mailto:dave () farber net>> wrote:
The WMD of the Telecom space djf
________________________________________
From: bobr () bobrosenberg phoenix az us<mailto:bobr () bobrosenberg phoenix az us> [bobr () bobrosenberg phoenix az 
us<mailto:bobr () bobrosenberg phoenix az us>]
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 8:20 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Special to CNET News.com:   AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by  2010

Dave

Perhaps for I.P.

"In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the
entire Internet today."   Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for
AT&T

[irony]
Oh no!  Another crisis!  Once again, the sky is falling!

I'm gonna run out in the backyard & dig another bombshelter.

Where is Gordon Moore and his Law when we need them?
[/irony]

Have a nice weekend.   ;-)
Bob

--
Bob Rosenberg
P.O. Box 33023
Phoenix, AZ  85067-3023
Mobile:  602-206-2856
LandLine:  602-274-3012
bob () bobrosenberg phoenix az us<mailto:bob () bobrosenberg phoenix az us>

**************

 AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010
By Andrew Donoghue
Special to CNET News.com Published: April 18, 2008 7:17 AM PDT
AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010

http://www.news.com/ATT-Internet-to-hit-full-capacity-by-2010/2100-1034_3-6237715.html?tag=cd.lede

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the
Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by
2010.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice
president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that
constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of
video and user-generated content being uploaded.

"The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting
the Internet today," he said. "In three years' time, 20 typical households will
generate more traffic than the entire Internet today."

Cicconi, who was speaking at the event as part of a wider series of meetings with
U.K. government officials, said that at least $55 billion worth of investment was
needed in new infrastructure in the next three years in the U.S. alone, with the
figure rising to $130 billion to improve the network worldwide. "We are going to be
butting up against the physical capacity of the Internet by 2010," he said.

He claimed that the "unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic" would increase
50-fold by 2015 and that AT&T is investing $19 billion to maintain its network and
upgrade its backbone network.

Cicconi added that more demand for high-definition video will put an increasing
strain on the Internet infrastructure. "Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube
every minute. Everything will become HD very soon, and HD is 7 to 10 times more
bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic
by 2010, up from 30 percent today," he said.

The AT&T executive pointed out that the Internet exists, thanks to the
infrastructure provided by a group of mostly private companies. "There is nothing
magic or ethereal about the Internet--it is no more ethereal than the highway
system. It is not created by an act of God, but upgraded and maintained by private
investors," he said.

Although Cicconi's speech did not explicitly refer to the term "Net neutrality,"
some audience members tackled him on the issue in a question-and-answer session,
asking whether the subtext of his speech was really around prioritizing some kinds
of traffic. Cicconi responded by saying he believed government intervention in the
Internet was fundamentally wrong.

"I think people agree why the Internet is successful. My personal view is that
government has widely chosen to...keep a light touch and let innovators develop it,"
he said. "The reason I resist using the term 'Net neutrality' is that I don't think
government intervention is the right way to do this kind of thing. I don't think
government can anticipate these kinds of technical problems. Right now, I think Net
neutrality is a solution in search of a problem."

Net neutrality refers to an ongoing campaign calling for governments to legislate to
prevent Internet service providers from charging content providers for
prioritization of their traffic. The debate is more heated in the United States than
in the United Kingdom because there is less competition between ISPs in the States.

Content creators argue that Net neutrality should be legislated in order to protect
consumers and keep all Internet traffic equal. Network operators and service
providers argue that the Internet is already unequal, and certain types of
traffic--VoIP, for example--require prioritization by default.

"However well-intentioned, regulatory restraints can inefficiently skew investment,
delay innovation, and diminish consumer welfare, and there is reason to believe that
the kinds of broad marketplace restrictions proposed in the name of 'neutrality'
would do just that, with respect to the Internet," the U.S. Department of Justice
said in a statement last year.

The BBC has come under fire from service providers such as Tiscali, which claim that
its iPlayer online-TV service is becoming a major drain on network bandwidth.

In a recent posting on his BBC blog, Ashley Highfield, the corporation's director of
future media and technology, defended the iPlayer: "I would not suggest that ISPs
start to try and charge content providers. They are already charging their customers
for broadband to receive any content they want."

Andrew Donoghue of ZDNet UK reported from London.


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