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This
page considers recurrent announcements of the imminent
'end of the net' or 'internet meltdown'.
It covers -
introduction
The past decade has seen recurrent predictions that the
internet (whether globally, in a particular region or
a nation) will shortly "collapse" or "melt
down".
Those predictions have often gained substantial media
coverage and some attention from government.
Typically they have centred on claims that the net would
cease to operate - or would become intolerably slow -
because
- of
action by terrorists (eg a "cyber-jihad")
or hackers (release of virii),
-
key servers and other infrastructure would be damaged
through disasters such as fires or earthquakes,
-
switches would prove inadequate in the face of a demand
that would supposedly double every hundred days (a prediction
questioned elsewhere on this site),
-
internet protocol addresses would run out,
-
consumer demand for streaming video or filesharing of
audio recordings would saturate local and international
fibre links because network operators had insufficient
dark fibre.
Some
claims are attributable to journalistic over-enthusiasm
or naivety ('end of the world' predictions grab attention),
opportunism by network management service vendors, self-promotion
by pundits, extrapolation from problematical base data
or promotion by infrastructure vendors keen to boost sales
or legitimate advocacy in regulatory disagreements.
AT&T publicist Jim Cicconi thus claimed during April
2008 that that
In
three years' time, 20 typical households will generate
more traffic than the entire Internet today.
The
impetus for that weirdness appears to be the telco's anxiety
about 'net neutrality', with Cicconi emphasising that
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.
The
Internet Innovation Alliance, a telco lobby group, more
modestly claimed in 2008 that 20 homes would generate
more traffic in 2011 "than the entire Internet did
in 1995".
Other doomsayers have offered a different view of 'the
end of the net', claiming that users are suffering from
information overload,
are being forced 'off
grid' or are merely experiencing the 'death
of email'.
Hannu Kari gained attention for his 2004 Internet
Is Deteriorating And Close To Collapse: What Can We Do
To Survive?’ presentation (PDF).
Jonathan Zittrain's The Future of the Internet: And
How to Stop It was promoted
in 2008 with the claim that "The Internet is primed
for a meltdown - and the most obvious cures are just as
bad ...".
In 2004 US advocacy group People For Internet Responsibility
(PFIR) announced
-
an
"emergency" conference aimed at preventing
the "meltdown" of the Internet - the risks
of imminent disruption, degradation, unfair manipulation,
and other negative impacts on critical Internet services
and systems in ways that will have a profound impact
on the Net and its users around the world.
Events
that supposedly threatened to melt the net include -
- streaming
of World Cup soccer (UK, 2006)
- BBC
video (UK, 2008)
Causes
include -
- terrorists
(forecast for "tomorrow" by Aleksandr Gostev
of Kaspersky Labs, 2004)
- hackers
(Catalyst,
ABC TV, 2002)
- hackers
(Wired,
1997)
- Y2K
(ISOC,
1999)
- capacity
problems (Bob Metcalfe
, InfoWorld, 1995 and 1999) - collapse in 1996
and 2000
- capacity
problems (Gerry McGovern,
1996)
- "congestion
collapse" (Bob Braden,
1997)
- capacity
problems (Nemertes
Research, 2007)
- capacity
problems (Jim Cicconi, AT&T, 2008) - collapse in
2010
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