Internet 'heading for gridlock'

The internet needs massive investment to boost its capacity and intelligence if it is to avoid gridlock, says a new report issued today.

Youtube and its imitators are generating 100 million video streams a day – and that is not counting traffic from entertainment giants like Disney, says the Analysys report released by the New Millennium Research Council.

It says that despite recent advances it is still not possible to deliver real-time TV-quality video to a large number of simultaneous web users.

It warns: "To handle this (next) level of traffic increase, backbone operators will need to reach a new plateau in network scale and traffic management capability.”

Cited danger signals cited include:

• Growth in average internet traffic (75 per cent) in 2006 outpaced the growth of capacity (47 per cent) on international backbones for the third consecutive year.
  
• Americans viewed 123 billion videos online, with an average length of 2.6 minutes, according to a 2007 Comscore study.
  
• Between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of consumer internet traffic stems from peer-to-peer file "shares" of audio and video files.
  

And demand for capacity is likely to grow still faster as major vendors deliver movies online.

Report author Jason Kowal, US head of research at Analysys Consulting, said: “Service providers, software companies, and network vendors will need to constantly invent new ways to meet enhanced expectations for speed, security, and accountability.”