Netflix may "use up" the whole Internet

Huh, that's interesting. Is fiber optic considered broadband as well? Our Roku player is constantly going throughout the day. I never thought how much bandwidth we actually take up. I can imagine a few years down the line some disappointed kids when I have to say "Sorry kids, no Dora or Hello Kitty today, we broke the internet." lol

It IS a serious concern! Too many see bandwidth as unlimited. That's MORONIC. They have upgraded parts MANY times. HECK, an area near here they have streets ripped up, and they are laying pipes that would ONLY be usable for things like fiberoptic cable.

When they created the phone system, it only handled a portion of the range of hearing. It was NEVER meant to be high fidelity. They then had MANY conversations going down one wire. That also worked ok for computers for a time. 2400baud(about 240cps) stressed the system, as I recall, so they encoded differently, and managed to get up to like 9600baud(960 cps). Eventually, they got to close to 38K, and they ran out of ability. ISDN used upgraded systems, and TWO wires to get 128K(about 12,800cps) What did networks do? They used WHOLE TRUNK LINES, called T1(BUNDLES of those lines) to get 1.5Mbps(about 150,000cps) THEN they used effectively a bondle of T1s(called a T3) to get about 48mbps(IIRC). THEN they decided to STOP, they had to switch to fiber optic! The wire didn't just magically change to fiber optic.

And even fiber optic has a limit. And YEAH, I have been saying the SAME thing about companies like netflix. It really is pushing things too far. THAT is why companies have fought for "net neutrality". Eventually, things will just break. One LARGE PHONE company, which used to be the biggest in the US and perhaps the second biggest on the planet, about 5 years ago only had like 3-6TB of bandwidth in the US. I saw their layout, as I worked with a subsidiary for a time. And THAT bandwidth was only usable in a small(small here may mean like 100Miles) swath between california and new york. The other areas were SLOWER!

BTW California and New York have historically had the biggest need and both are considered major powerhouses. So that is probably why they had the most bandwidth between them. But imagine all the roads that had to be ripped up just to lay THOSE lines!

BTW 6TB, to put that in perspective, is only enough to run about 4,000,000 of those T1s at full speed. That is only enough to transfer about 8,571 CDS(NOT DVDS, CDs) a second. That sounds like a lot, but only counts a company like netflix. I've worked with a lot of companies that are close to the east coast, and the database is in california, that transfer gigabytes, or even terabytes of data REGULARLY. And don't forget that they DO need to still handle phone calls. And even MOBILE phones use that network!

Steve

And it could bring serious consequences to our business. If the internet access is slow, people have more time to say "screw it" when they come to your site and it loads slowly.

Sorry, it's just time for the US infrastructure to catch up with the rest of the world. Netflix is not getting rid of DVDs but changing some of their programs. If they were to stop shipping DVDs I for one would start renting elsewhere. I'm sorry but streaming cannot match true Blu Ray content for watching certain theatrical releases. For now I relegate streaming to watching television shows.

I read this report earlier too, and it's unsurprising since video will gobble up the lion's share of any network's bandwidth. Netflix has become ubiquitous, and with its low subscription fees it has enjoyed incredible penetration in the marketplace.

The author's observations and comments are a little sensationalist though, and if you read the footnote at the bottom of the article they've now been corrected to reflect the actual statistics. For example, he had said that Netflix was gobbling up 20% of all available network bandwidth, when it should have said 20% of existing traffic, which is a big difference!

No way it will destroy the internet. Just look at how electronics and technology have been advancing. Just look at last 10 years.
Sometimes it's really interesting to think about what's the world like in 5-10 years.
I mean 10 years ago we had Nokia 3310s with 2 colours and monophonic ringtones. Look at the mobile phones now. And everything else is evolving just as mobile phones are.

Well, they better fix it then.

~Michael

Its likely that as the bandwidth consumed increases, internet connectivity speeds will increase. Technology usually keeps pace with the demands, after all that is capitalism.

I would say this won't be much of a problem, as the ISP's will just have to beef up their infrastructure. It will affect the end user, because if the ISP's do beef up the price of the internet will increase. I surely hope this doesn't lead to a pay per use billing system that all of the service providers seemingly want to push on all of us.

The sky is falling. Everybody panic.

There is lots of money to be made in upgrading the infrastructure and providing media products. Therefore, I predict that bandwidth supply will rise to meet the demand.

Don't forget, in the US companies charge more for internet service than other countries. In Japan they get much faster connections for less.
If people keep using more bandwith more cable and fiber will be laid to meet demands. I wouldn't worry about it too much.
I bet back when people were using dialup some reporter wrote a report about how we are using up all the phoneline bandwidth :-P

So many of these types of articles lately. "The World Will End", "Internet Will Be Censored".

You cannot believe everything you read.

This is absurd. There is so much dark fiber around the country it's ridiculous. This is about big content trying to smear Netflix because all of a sudden they are a threat.

Content distribution networks (CDNs) are being deployed throughout the country as a way to help offset the distance these files must travel across the network.

Here's a good example of where we are at: one of 2 major ISPs in a metro of ~1,000,000 hits about 1.3Gb/s max every day. Backbone switches and routers are supporting up to 10Gb on a single line. One switch port on one of these switches could theoretically handle the bandwidth of the entire metro day-in, day-out (it's not really that simple, but it does illustrate the point). The backbone is fine.

The last mile is what needs help.

There was a segment on our news that suggested that companies weren't providing as much speed as they say they are.. we are suppose to be at 50mbps now and they can barley handle 20mbps... it also suggested that the reason we are slowing down is because they keep adding more speed than there servers can handle, and it's slowing everyone else down..

this is interesting because I never seen netflix as a threat, you could of said the same thing about youtube tho..