Study: Video Traffic to Kill Internet by 2010

Wrong.

As ISPs get overwhelmed with video traffic, they will upgrade their infrastructure and come up with new strategies to deliver video content to users.

Imminent Death of the Net Predicted! Film at 11!

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net...

I just switched to viewing all video either as downloads or live streams. Many downloads are 780p HD. For me this requires about 1GB to 2GB daily. I also upgraded to a 20MBs downstream link from Comcast and typically see download speeds averaging 5Mb/s. Even with the the Comcast cap of 250GB per month current products sold by US ISPs can easily meet a reasonable demand for video.

For an interesting read on how ISPs are addressing the increasing need for high bandwidth demand read http://loosebolts.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/our-vision-for-ge...

I think I have heard this claim every few years since the mid 90's. It is likely as valid now as in the past.

Upgrading Hardware is of course one way to scale. I think the most benefit could occur from implementing a smart TCP congestion avoidance solution. Quite a while ago I stumbled over an interesting article or paper (can't quite remember, RFC??). Bascially it provides a easy solution for trottling and active feedback if a router is overwhelmed, which allows more intelligent routing. The theoretical speed improvement was significant.