The broadband crunch - Get Ready for the Internet Overload
May 3rd, 2008 DJB
The broadband crunch
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An ‘exabyte’ is a lot of data. It is 1.074 billion gigabytes of data, to be exact. It would take 14 million laptops like mine to store an exabyte. Two exabytes equals the total volume of information generated back in 1999. Today, the internet is handling one exabyte of data every single hour.
The sheer size of the internet, not to mention seemingly universal access to it, makes it easy to forget how young the net really is.
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Many of us are now so familiar with – and reliant on – this technology that it’s hard to believe it is such a recent development, but it has been with us for a mere blink of an eye in historical terms: speedy commercial access to the world wide web barely made it to us by the end of the 20th century.
Something like YouTube would have seemed like a crazy dream just 10 years ago. Six million videos on a single website, each available to watch in an instant? Impossible.
Bandwidth-hungry online video
But now online video streaming is a reality - and enormously popular. However, downloading a 30 minute television programme consumes more bandwidth than receiving 200 e-mails every day for a year. Small wonder then that the internet is already working hard to keep up with our demands.
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This growing demand for online video and streaming television (like the BBC’s iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4oD) is draining the internet’s capacity to deliver data. “Changes in internet usage have quickly turned the internet into an entertainment medium,” says Asam Ahmad of broadband provider Virgin Media. “And there does need to be an open discussion about how bandwidth is managed.”
Broadband providers
ISPs currently use moderate measures to ensure the most extreme bandwidth hogs do not ruin it for the rest of us. Virgin Media, for instance, uses a ‘non-discriminatory’ policy of peak time traffic management, based on a user’s total bandwidth consumption, which might temporarily lessen the speed of a video junkie’s connection if his or her usage has been particularly high.
These measures have been effective so far, and the burden of increasing demands might not have been felt yet - but it will soon. Experts are predicting a ‘broadband crunch’ come 2010, wherein increasing use of bandwidth-hungry services will bring the internet to a virtual standstill.
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A report by Nemertes Research, a group that analyses the business value of emerging technology, says that current investment in internet infrastructure is insufficient to meet growing bandwidth demands.
“The network is coping”
Speaking to MSN, a BT spokesman acknowledged the issue but downplayed its severity. “It’s a commercial issue for certain internet service providers. If usage patterns progressively increase because customers are doing things which are increasing their use of bandwidth, and if those customers are charged a fixed price for a fixed amount of bandwidth, then there is a question about whether certain business models are sustainable.
“On a technical level: can the network physically cope? As things stand, the network is coping. Though if you were to ask whether the network in shape for the streaming of multiple broadcast-quality TV-type signals all over the internet to every home in the land… then that will probably require considerable investment in the network.” Because although the internet advances very quickly, the large-scale infrastructure that supports it, delivering it to homes and offices around the country, has not quite kept up.
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The hardware problem
The internet video boom is being handled in the UK by networks which, in many places, were originally intended to carry voice calls only. It is testament to some very clever engineering that old hardware has been enabled to cope with as much as it has – but this cannot go on forever.
The problem lies not with the modern fibre optics and underground cabling of the internet’s main motorways, whose high technology and vast capacities mean data can zip from one part of the world to another in next to no time. The limiting factor comes at the last stage of the journey: in the routers, switches and copper wires that run finally from an exchange into a home.
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When it comes to broadband speeds, the UK already lags behind many other countries. About 90 per cent of South Korea is hooked up with an average advertised broadband speed of 43 Mbps. In France the average is about 44 Mbps, whereas Japan has an astounding 90 Mbps. These figures all put the ‘up to 8 Mbps’ connections typically offered by UK providers in the shade.
A return to dial-up speeds?
What would a ‘broadband crunch’ mean for UK internet users? The Nemertes report predicts that if the problem is not addressed, users could be looking at a gradual return to the speeds of the dial-up networking of yesteryear. For those of us who know the joys of 28.8 kilobits per second modems, this is a worrying prospect.
The study says the slow-down will change our experience of the web. “[In the future] it may take more than one attempt to confirm an online purchase or it may take longer to download the latest video from YouTube,” says the report. More significant still is the crunch’s potential braking effect on internet progress. Online innovations – the next YouTube, iPlayer, eBay, or something entirely new and different – might simply not get off the ground if networks cannot support them.
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It’s not difficult to see why large-scale internet infrastructure has been neglected: upgrading such a system is a mammoth task. Although installing speedy fibre optic connections to homes nationwide is the most obvious of solutions, it represents an enormous expense and a huge amount of work. With the internet working adequately for the time being, many would hardly see the need for an upgrade, not to mention resent the digging up of roads across the country. Finally, there is the issue of who would foot the multi-billion pound bill.
An expensive project
When internet service providers have to compete with each other’s prices to win customers, an expensive, long-term project like fibre-to-the-home does not appeal. This, however understandably, leads to an approach that may not be viable in the long run.
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Other providers believe they already have the problem in hand. “We will be rolling out a 50 Mbps service on our entire network at the end of the year,” Virgin Media told MSN. “”The technology we are putting into the network can theoretically cope with 300 Mbps upstream and downstream simultaneously. 50 Mbps is a good upgrade for now.”
This year, BT will trial 100Mbps fibre-to-the-home connections at an estate of new homes in Ebbsfleet, with a view to using the project as a feasibility study for further high-speed connections.
Who should cover the costs?
Alternatively, we might ask those who generate the demand for bandwidth to cough up. There have already been whispers that the likes of YouTube and iPlayer should contribute to the networks that support their services. But then could these services realistically remain free?
The solution might well require a government-funded initiative. It would be a worthy endeavour, one that would drive the nation’s technology forward and prepare us for the exponential growth of the internet. But it would also ultimately be a project funded by taxpayer money - and thus not necessarily popular.
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The government recently launched a review on next-generation broadband access. “Its purpose is to look at the government can pave the way for faster broadband and minimise the cost for private sector investment – and what barriers there are to that investment,” a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform told MSN. “Still, the roll-out of next-generation access should be private sector led, with minor public sector intervention.”
Looking ahead
The way forward – and the extent of the ‘broadband crunch’ threat – is not yet altogether clear. The solution may be something other than to fibre-to-the-home; it may not involve any kind of cabling at all. To bridge the sluggish so-called ‘last mile’ between exchange and home, wireless broadband services are another option for enabling the next generation of internet access.
“New wireless WiMAX technology shows it possible to achieve download speed of up to 65 Mbps at close range to users,” says David Hill of Spirent Communications, a telecommunications testing firm. “This would be sufficient to plug many of the gaps in the internet infrastructure quickly and at much lower cost and inconvenience than digging up roads to lay new cable.”
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Finally, Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards recently proposed an altogether different approach: using our existing sewer network to house internet infrastructure. It was a tentative suggestion, with Richards recommending further study. “We need to establish what the position is here and whether or not duct access has a role to play in the development of competitive next-generation access. So, in cooperation with operators we intend to undertake a survey of the existing duct network.”
