Could Video Sharing Bring Down the Internet?

Supply and demand is a problem as old as the hills. And so is wondering about whether we're going to run out of that supply (bandwidth capacity) when it comes to the Internet. It started when the web was invented (with graphics!), continued when broadband to the home rolled out, continued still when VoIP and Napster launched, and now it's earning attention in mainstream media. This time, the blame is being leveled at online video; specifically the sharing of movies and TV shows via peer to peer networks.

The numbers, on the surface, can be staggering. A third of web traffic today is estimated to be P2P videos being transferred among users. Cisco says consumer video (YouTube and the like) is now nine percent of all traffic and will hit 30 percent by 2011. And naturally, as more companies like Apple and Amazon sell downloadable video in high quality, that will eat up bandwidth as well. Doing the math from the story: 1 hour of high-quality video is equal in size to 25,000 email messages. That's significant.

But is all this video going to crash the net as we know it? Or slow it down to a crawl? Fortunately for us, bandwidth continues to grow, as do technologies for managing traffic and prioritizing bits so audio and video playback come out smooth. Personally, I find the panic a little overdone. We have plenty of upside for increased bandwidth in the States, especially when compared to some other, more progressive countries like Korea. And even at today's bandwidth levels, even the most pessimistic forecasts for video growth shouldn't lead to the catastrophe that some are worrying about.

Most likely case: Little hiccups here and there, sporadic outages from time to time, and big upgrades rolling across the country. In other words, pretty much the way things are now. Feel free to disagree in the comments!

LINK: Video Surge Divides Web Watchers