Net grows to meet fresh demands (BBC) {tubes filling up}

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website

The net is facing the need for serious upgrades in order to meet fresh demands such as high definition video on the web and social networking.

A recent report from Deloitte said 2007 could be the year the internet approaches capacity, with demand outstripping supply. It predicted bottlenecks in some of the net's backbones as the amount of data overwhelms the size of the pipes.

On Tuesday more than a million people watched a video clip of a friendly fire incident in Iraq via the website of the Sun newspaper, reflecting the explosion of interest in online video.

But earlier this week a Google executive said the net would struggle to deliver high quality video over the web.

Vincent Dureau, Google's head of TV technology, said that the web could not scale to meet surges in demand and so could not deliver a good experience.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6342063.stm

The better news is farther into the article. Oodles of $$$$ are going into more infrastructure. One of the conclusions is that the last mile of the journey -- into people's homes -- could end up being the bottleneck.

The telcos are going to tell us that they need to charge users more and in a tiered format, in order to pay for all this bandwidth. Don't believe them.

and then, finally, upgrading to a hard drive, so everyone could play that simplistic video game (that came on big floppies) easily.

Ah, the BM days (Before Mice)....!!!!!!

Of course, I remember three networks on the tee vee and having to get my fat ass up off the couch to change the channel....so I think all this technology, behind the curve though I am, is just grand!

I get an image of someone piling Jenga blocks into the sky. Just seems at some point, it will all come crashing down. That is the nature of all things, isn't it? Sheesh, I'm making myself depressed, lol.

I've even progressed to having a cell phone and online banking!

My husband is still struggling with that whole "truck full of tubes" thing. :)