The Internet Is Growing 1

The Internet Is Growing: Why It Is a Problem and What Can Be Done About It

Brendyn O'Dell-Alexander

Rochester Institute of Technology

 The Internet Is Growing 2

Abstract

The Internet has become an integral part of modern society. This is apparent in the substantial

growth over the last decade in the number of unique Internet users worldwide and the average time

each spends online. Alongside these trends, a shift is occurring toward consuming larger and more

varied media, due in part to the emergence of popular services such as YouTube, iTunes, and Xbox Live.

These changes are stressing components of the Internet designed to solve different problems than those

faced today. As a result, assumptions about the longevity of core Internet technologies such as the

Internet Protocol (IP) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) are faltering. To address these

concerns, solutions such as IPv6, Content Delivery Networks, and faster physical mediums will need to

be adopted in the near future to help ensure that the Internet remains a valuable resource for

generations to come.
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1. Introduction

The Internet is an incredible tool. First created for military purposes (Clark, 1988), the Internet

has since penetrated almost every aspect of our lives. When Tim Berners-Lee unveiled the complex

system of cables and protocols known as the World Wide Web in 1990 (Cailliau, 1995), few could have

predicted the popularity it has seen. As of June 2008, nearly 1.5 billion people around the world have

access to this resource--a number, while large, equal to just 21.9% of the total population (Miniwatts

Marketing Group, n.d.a). And, with countries like China and India on the rise, each with only a small

percentage of its one billion citizens currently connected, it is likely that use of the Internet will continue

to climb.

Also increasing is the prevalence of rich content. In its original conception, the Internet was

meant to ferry small amounts of information from host to host. The underlying technologies of the

Internet were built and configured for this purpose. In the epithetical "Internet 2.0" world, however,

where online videos, music, and gaming reign supreme, users have developed an insatiable appetite for

the large amounts of data services are able to provide. This increase in demand has evoked an increase

in supply, with large corporations pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure aimed at serving more

content. Together, growth in the total number of Internet users and the amount of data they are

consuming has imposed challenging issues for the current Internet architecture.

While most users encounter their fair share of headaches while surfing the Web, they are

typically shielded from its underlying failures. Web browsers and the layers of technology beneath them

mask many of the problems encountered when a user makes a request. These problems arise from

environmental factors that impact the transmission of information and are frequently automatically

accounted for. That said, anyone who has tried to view an extremely popular website has seen the

subcutaneous flaws of the Internet's architecture surface. Under high volumes of use, the Internet

becomes a first-come-first-served environment with its pitfalls prominently on display.

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Demands during these moments of popularity are analogous to the consistent demand the

Internet could see as developing countries increase their connectivity and our desire for rich content

continues to swell. In other words, what is now anomalous in those rare moments of super popularity

could soon become commonplace. Fortunately, computer scientists and networking engineers have

been working to address this looming crisis. If issues inherent to current solutions can be overcome, this

potential catastrophe can be avoided even as massive user growth and rich data consumption continue.

This paper analyzes growth in three key areas over the last decade--the number of unique

Internet users, the size of data they consume, and the amount of time they spend online--and maps that

growth to the components of the Internet architecture that are impacted most. Key issues with each of

these components are then outlined, followed by examples of popular solutions capable of addressing

these concerns and prolonging the life of the Internet.

2. Internet Growth by the Numbers

Since tracking of worldwide Internet usage began, the unique number of people surfing the Web

has ballooned, going from 16 million in 1995 to approximately 1.46 billion as of June 2008 (Miniwatts

Marketing Group, n.d.a)--a 9,125% increase in only 23 years. This explosive growth is due to the traction

the Internet has quickly gained with businesses, educational institutions, and other establishments.

One possible way to observe Internet growth is through a set of three metrics, including the

number of unique users, the type of media consumed, and the total time spent online. The first

represents the total number of people around the world with the ability to connect to the Internet and

consume its services. The second encompasses the types of media, such as plain HTML, pictures, or

videos, that people typically interact with while surfing the Web. And the final metric quantifies how

much time users spend on the Internet once they have logged on. Together, these values demonstrate
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how Internet growth over the last decade has been multidimensional, with separate forces aligning to

create compounded upward trends.

2.1. Population-based Unique User Growth

The number of unique Internet users has grown extremely fast over the last decade. Much of

this growth is attributable to a subset of countries, namely China, India, and a handful of other Asian

nations. In the time between 2000 and 2008, China alone experienced an increase of 1,024.4%, now

with 253 million of its citizens online (Miniwatts Marketing Group, n.d.b). This number represents only a

fifth of its total population. India, during the same period, saw its unique user count jump by 1,100%

(Miniwatts Marketing Group, n.d.b), with a mere 5.2%, or 60 million people, of its total population

connected. Growth trends like these are common across Asia, with other countries, though smaller in

size, exhibiting equally as large or larger growth spurts. Myanmar, Vietnam, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and

Afghanistan saw their online populations grow by 3,900%, 9,979.8%, 12,969.5%, 23,166.7%, and an

incredible 57,900%, respectively (Miniwatts Marketing Group, n.d.b). Considering that these nations

represent a sample of those with mountainous gains, and that each has a population of at least 28

million of which none has more than 24% online, this rapid and large growth is likely to continue.

In other parts of the world, growth is occurring at a lesser but steady rate. Since 2000, North

America has seen its pool of online users grow from 108 million to 248 million (Miniwatts Marketing

Group, n.d.a), an increase of 129.6%, as of 2008. Africa (1,031.2%), Europe (266%), the Middle East

(1,176.8%), Latin America (669.3%), and Oceania (165.1%) (Miniwatts Marketing Group, n.d.c) have all

seen sizable increases, as well. This enormous growth suggests that a greater number of people are

consuming the same amount of limited Internet resources, pushing it toward its present maximum

capacity.
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2.2. Market-based Unique User Growth

Another meaning of unique users is the total number of distinct people who access a web site or

service. This metric is used to calculate the popularity of a given site and the services it provides. Three

market segments contributing substantially to the growth of Internet use are online media, gaming, and

social networking. Combined, these industries have hundreds of millions of users and account for a large

amount of Internet traffic.

2.2.1 Online Media

Online media is perhaps the most prominent industry to have emerged on the Web in the last

10 years. The stars within this field are streaming video and digital music, each having seen enormous

expansion. On the streaming video stage, YouTube, a Google web application that allows users to

upload and share videos, is the main actor. Throughout July 2006, YouTube had approximately 16

million unique users in the United States and streamed 649 million videos to that group (comScore, Inc.,

2006). Only two years later in July 2008, the number of unique users multiplied by five, with 71.6 million

people watching videos via their service. The quantity of videos streamed increased by an even larger

amount, jumping seven times to roughly 5 billion (comScore, Inc., 2008a). Though the year-over-year

percentage growth in unique users since 2006 has stemmed, going down from 347.5% between 2006-

2007 to 28.6% between 2007-2008, it is estimated that nearly 200,000 videos are uploaded daily

(YouTube Statistics, 2008), a number indicative of continued demand.

To bolster that indication, online attendance during the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Olympic

games presents evidence that streaming video is fast becoming a staple of the online experience. In

2004, NBC served 10.8 million video streams to a total of 25.2 million unique viewers during the 17-day

period in Athens (NBC Universal, Inc., 2008). Four years later in Beijing, the number of video streams

grew by 599% to 75.5 million, while the number of unique users more than doubled to 51.9 million (NBC
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Universal, Inc., 2008). These numbers equate to an impressive 9.9 million hours, or 1,126 years, of video

watched (NBC Universal, Inc., 2008).

Digital music has also seen tremendous growth over the last few years, with iTunes, Apple's

online music store, at the center of the market. iTunes debuted in January 2001 and saw its unique user

count climb to 13.9 million in only four years. More impressively, between November 2005 and January

2007, the service saw growth of approximately 4 million users every year (Website Optimization, LLC,

2007). Only a year later in December 2007, the number of users jumped to 35.7 million, representing

157% growth in only three years (Website Optimization, LLC, 2008). Considering Apple's increasing share

in the phone, mp3 player, and laptop markets, as well as new entrants into the digital music realm such

as Microsoft and Amazon, this growth will presumably continue in the future.

2.2.2 Online Gaming

The second major contributor to the rise in the quantity of unique Internet users is online

gaming. Game console providers such as Microsoft and Sony have invested heavily in Internet

connectivity with their Xbox Live and PlayStation Network services. Microsoft alone, since unveiling its

Xbox Live features in 2002, has encountered large success. Three years after its release, the service had

1.4 million subscribers (Microsoft Corporation, 2005). Two years later, when the number of subscribers

was measured again, it had climbed to 6 million (Microsoft Corporation, 2007). Eleven months after

that, it reached 12 million, with an estimated new user registering every 5 seconds (Microsoft

Corporation, 2008). Calculated out, that number implies that nearly 6.3 million additional users will

register in 2008, bringing the Xbox Live total to approximately 18.3 million subscribers. Similarly, though

the Sony PlayStation Network has only existed for one-and-a-half years, it now has 2.8 million

subscribers with 100,000 new users joining weekly (Carless, 2008). This implies that by the end of 2008,
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its network will have almost 8 million unique users. With just 50% of PlayStation owners consuming its

online service, plenty of room exists for the PlayStation Network to grow (Carless, 2008).

In parallel to services consumed via gaming consoles, massively multiplayer online role-playing

games (MMORPGs) have attracted millions of users to their immersive, virtual worlds. For example,

World of Warcraft, which began in 2004 and is now the most popular MMORPG, has over 10 million

subscribers (Woodcock, 2008). Since its mainstream breakthrough in 2002, the overall MMORPG market

has seen its numbers increase by large increments, going from 3.5 million users in 2002 to 6 million in

2004, 13 million in 2006, and an estimated 16 million in 2008 (Woodcock, n.d.). Gaming has been a

common source for entertainment for decades, and by incorporating sociability into what was once

isolated play, makers are broadening the appeal of their games and their market size.

2.2.3 Online Social Networking

Social networking sites--most prominently Facebook and MySpace--are the third cause of the

large growth in online unique users. For the past few years, these two online behemoths have grappled

for the title of largest virtual community, adding features at a record pace to attract new users.

MySpace, as of June 2008, had 117 million unique visitors per month (comScore, Inc., 2008b). Facebook,

with rapid growth between 2007 and 2008, saw 132 million unique visitors per month on average

(comScore, Inc., 2008b). In addition, other members in the virtual community business such as HI5.com,

Friendster.com, and Google-owned Orkut, have a combined 127 million unique visitors a month, with

each experiencing more than 40% growth year-over-year (comScore, Inc., 2008b). Because these sites

primarily target young people and college students, two user bases which are constantly replenished,

their growth will no doubt continue.

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2.3. Business Response to Growth

What hints most at continued growth may not be the increase in unique users itself, but the

business reaction to it. As the Internet's popularity has risen, so has the investment in advertising to its

users. Google, for instance, a company whose profits are based mainly on online advertising, purchased

ad firm Doubleclick for $3.1 billion in 2007 (Story & Helft, 2007) to shore up its Internet capabilities. Not

to be outdone, Microsoft, which aggressively competes with Google in the online ad market, bought

aQuantive in the same year for $6 billion (Isidore, 2007). Though impressive investments, having the

capability to advertise well is only the first step toward increasing profits. Much like traditional

advertising, space is needed for product placements for companies who pay Google and Microsoft to be

their advertising firm. This has created a race among the software giants to expand their suite of web

services. Because each new service acts as a digital billboard by providing additional space for

advertisements, Google, Microsoft, and others have an incentive to create quality services which attract

users who will, in turn, buy the advertised products.

One core asset in this ongoing technology arms race is the number of data centers each

company has. Data centers are used to serve up content to the hundreds of millions of people around

the world who request it. As such, both the number and geographical location of data centers are

important measures of success. To improve both, massive capital investments are required. Google, for

instance, has invested approximately $6.3 billion in data center infrastructure since 2006 (Miller, 2008).

In the first quarter of its 2008 fiscal year, Google poured $842 million into its data center strategy, its

largest single-quarter purchase of equipment to date (Miller, 2008). Microsoft plans to invest a large

sum of money, as well, predicting it will spend between $1.2 and $1.5 billion a year to grow its data

center capacity (Associated Press, 2008).

For Google, as their business model depends on Internet software and online advertising, this

spending habit will likely continue unabated. And it is equally likely that Microsoft will further invest in
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this lucrative space. At a yearly analyst meeting in Washington, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, said,

"Everything you read, everything you watch, everything you want to communicate, all of those

experiences are going to happen over the Internet" (Associated Press, 2008). With its growing line-up of

Live-branded Windows, Office, and Xbox offerings, Microsoft is joining many others in realigning its

business model to offer online service complements to many of its traditional software applications.

2.4. Change in Size of Media Consumed

One by-product of the transition from traditional software to software-as-a-service is the user

demand for a rich experience. On the Internet, users want the same high-quality, immersive content

they consume on their personal computers. To retain users and gain a competitive edge, this demand is

being met by online service providers. One indicator that can be used to detect a change in content

trends is the amount of data flowing through the Internet, measured in bandwidth consumed.

Traditional files are smaller than their richer counterparts, so an increase in demand for rich media

should surface through an increase in bandwidth consumed. Indeed, between 2007 and 2008,

international bandwidth usage grew by 53%, down only slightly from the 61% increase seen between

2006 and 2007 (Kim, 2008).

Traditional Web surfing entails navigating to a web site and browsing through its pages. A

sampling of the top 1000 web sites on the Internet in 2008 found that the average size of a page on

those sites was approximately 310,000 bytes. In comparison, the size of an average YouTube video is

around 10 million bytes--over 30 times larger than a typical web page (Website Optimization, 2008b).

Similarly, the average size of an mp3 file is roughly 4.9 million bytes, or 15 times larger than the typical

web page (comScore, Inc., 2007). The increase in the number of unique users combined with more

consumption of richer, larger media has greatly taxed the current Internet architecture.
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2.5. Increase in Time Spent Online

Many of these new types of services are also more immersive, encouraging longer amounts of

time spent online. According to the 2008 "Annual Internet Survey" conducted by the Center for Digital

Future at the University of Southern California, the amount of time spent online per week by the

average American was 15.3 hours, an increase of an hour over 2006 and the largest amount reported

since the survey began (Center for the Digital Future, 2008). Globally, the average time spent on a PC

per month increased by 22 minutes between August and September 2008, climbing from 32 hours and

59 minutes to 33 hours and 21 minutes (The Nielsen Company, n.d.). Whether the sites they visited

promoted longer browsing sessions or the data they consumed required persistent online connectivity,

the fact is users stayed connected longer.

As an increasing number of Internet users have interacted with richer content for longer periods

of time, this activity has produced compounded stress on underlying cornerstones of the Internet

architecture. To understand the problem further, a working knowledge of the Internet's technical

fundamentals is necessary. Learning about its core components and their histories, it becomes clear that

the Internet was meant to solve a different set of problems and is not particularly suited for the ones

faced today.

3. Fundamentals of the Internet Architecture

The Internet as we know it is a semblance of what it started as in the early seventies.

Throughout its history, the Internet has faced challenges which arose as a result of architectural

decisions made to satisfy early requirements. To alleviate these issues, small changes, or what

amounted to temporary bandages, were applied to the Internet's underlying components. Because of
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the rapid growth of the Internet over the last decade, the problems are now overcoming the stopgaps

put in place and are demanding new attention be paid to implementing permanent fixes.

3.1. Original Goals

The concept of the Internet first arose within the United States military under the Advanced

Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense. The original goal of the Internet was to

connect two disparate military networks to allow for resource sharing (Clark, 1988). Adoption of this

goal carried with it other objectives regarding how that interconnectivity should work, including:

Neither network should be reconstructed and other networks should be able to interconnect, as well;

management of the networks should remain decentralized; and multiple hosts must be able to use the

same physical communication paths at the same time (Clark, 1988, pp. 1-2). That no centralized Internet

governance exists today, yet millions of people originating from different networks are able to connect

and use the Internet simultaneously, demonstrates that these goals were successfully met.

Of the goals listed, the most important to the military were decentralized management, as the

networks were to be used in combat situations, and the ability to connect wholly different networks

together with no reconfiguration required. The technologies subsequently developed to satisfy these

goals were the Internet Protocol (IP) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). These two protocols,

often referred to in tandem as TCP/IP, have been important to the success of the Internet while at the

same time the components which have experienced the majority of the growing pains.

3.2. The Internet Protocol

The Internet Protocol was developed to meet the goal of network interoperability. The basic

requirement was that the Internet must "be able to incorporate and utilize a wide variety of network

topologies, including military and commercial facilities" (Clark, 1988, p. 4). This was a futuristic goal as
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the concept of a computer network was then still in its infancy. Today, however, given the array of

private and public networks, this goal has proved prescient. Achieving interoperability also meant it was

necessary for the protocol to be basic and to impose as few requirements on the underlying network as

possible. One requirement that did make it into the standard was that each host on the network have a

way to be uniquely identified to make direct host-to-host communication possible. This identifier is

known as an IP address.

An IP address is assigned to each host when it first connects to the Internet. Once the IP address

is granted, it is embedded in every packet of information that originates from the host. The format of an

IP address today consists of four period-separated blocks, each comprised of eight binary bits. Each bit,

from right to left, represents 2nth power starting with n=0 (e.g. 20, 21, 22,...,27). When a bit is equal to 1,

its 2nth value is added to the total block value. For example, the eight-bit binary number 11111111 is

equal to 255, or the sum 20 + 21 + ... + 27. This particular number is also the maximum decimal value for

each block in the IPv4 standard. Thus, no IP address can have a value greater than 255.255.255.255.

Because each binary bit can only be 1 or 0, raising the possible binary number value options (2)

to the total number of bits in an IPv4 address (8 bits per block x 4 blocks = 32 bits) yields the total

number of possible IPv4 addresses, which is approximately 4 billion. This number seemed substantially

large at the time the Internet was invented, as "the idea of a vast global Internet connecting hundreds of

millions of individuals was, at best, a science-fiction fantasy" (Golding, 2006, p. 22). Nevertheless, that

fantasy has become reality and there exists now a serious issue with depletion of this limited resource.

3.2.1 Internet Protocol Address Allocation

Knowing that IP addresses are a scarce commodity may beg the question, how are they given

out? Allocation of IP addresses is done in a hierarchical fashion, though that hierarchy has changed over

time. Originally, entities could purchase Class A, B, or C address space based on whether they wanted 4
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million, 64,000, or 254 addresses, respectively (Young, 2008). As is perhaps obvious, these classes did

not accurately represent the variations in size of the requestors, leading to wasteful distribution of a

finite resource. With Internet usage erupting in the early nineties, this wastefulness resulted in not only

the realization by many Internet architects that "the impossible would happen--they would run out of

address space", but that complete depletion "would happen in only a few years" (Golding, 2006, p. 22).

To avoid the impending crisis, the allocation process was changed to what is called Classless

Inter-Domain Routing, or CIDR. This new system abandoned the inflexible classes and allowed IP

addresses to be granted in amounts based on powers of two. In this model, "blocks of 64 addresses

could be issued as easily as those containing 4 million addresses" (Golding, 2006, p. 23). Even with this

change, however, depletion still loomed in the near future. To counteract this scarcity, other

technologies such as Network Address Translation (NAT), a band-aid that reserved a fixed range of IP

addresses for intranet reuse, appeared in addition to new governing bodies known as Regional Internet

Registries (RIRs), whose were tasked with ensuring address consumption was carefully managed

(Golding, 2006).

Regardless, even these measures have not withstood the demand the Internet has seen. In May

2007, the American Registry for Internet Users (ARIN) issued a press release which stated that the

"available IPv4 resource pool has now been reduced to the point that ARIN is compelled to advise... that

migration...is necessary for any applications that require ongoing availability...of contiguous IP number

resources" (Plzak, 2007). In other words, the number of remaining addresses had dwindled to the point

where requests for new ones would soon be declined.

3.3. The Transmission Control Protocol

The other fundamental building block of the Internet is the Transmission Control Protocol.

When two hosts establish communication, the information that flows between them is transmitted in
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small fragments known as packets. In alignment with the goal of assuming little about the underlying

network, the IP specification had no built-in mechanism to determine important aspects such as how big

packets could be, when they should be sent, or how to guarantee their receipt. Responsibility for

defining these parameters was intentionally delegated to higher-level protocols such as TCP.

At the core of TCP is a simple flow control built on byte streams. When data is ushered through

the protocol, it is broken into packets based on the amount of contiguous data allowed. Prior to 1988,

TCP would send the information to the host requesting it and wait for acknowledgment of delivery. If

that never came, the protocol would resend the data as many times as it took to ensure that it was

successfully delivered. This functionality seemed harmless and even beneficial at first, but proved

crippling when traffic on a network increased (Wischik, 2005).

3.3.1 Early Issues With Traffic Flooding

Internet traffic is similar to highway traffic. Like roads, each connection between two points on

the Internet has a physical limitation on the number of elements that can pass through it at one time.

Much like a traffic jam, when that limit is reached, the aggregate speed of all elements passing through

the medium decreases. This happened as a result of the unchecked resend mechanism built into TCP.

When the connections on a network were under heavy use and the number of failed packet

transmissions increased, TCP saw each failure as a sign to try again. Essentially, the initial response to a

flood of traffic was to flood the network even more.

What was instituted in 1988 to curb this unintended byproduct was the slow and gradual

increase in packets sent followed by a rapid decrease when a failure was detected (Wischik, 2005). If all

was going well, consistent and high transfer rates were possible. But, when something went wrong, the

worst possible case was assumed and transmission rates reduced significantly. This host-level mitigation

was necessary because no central regulator existed to reroute data around traffic jams--though this fix
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succeeded in producing that effect by "using the collected decentralized intelligence of all the

computers connected to the Internet" (Wischik, 2005).

Despite the success of this update to the TCP protocol, cracks in its foundation are beginning to

show as Internet data trends change. As an example, consider high-definition video. To improve the

display quality of the video, more data is compressed into the same amount of playback time than in

regular videos. Hence, high-definition video files contain many times more bytes. This size difference

matters little if a user is viewing the video in a DVD player, for instance, where the disc holding the data

and the device the data are sent to are in close proximity, connected by cables capable of transferring

information rapidly. Small distance and a high-bandwidth medium are necessary for fast playback. Over

the Internet, these characteristics are neither guaranteed nor easy to maintain. Because of

environmental factors such as radiation and the basic nature of electronic signals, packets sent long

distances over limited-bandwidth connections have a higher probability of loss. As TCP underpins video

streaming on the Internet, it is difficult to reach and maintain the speed necessary for fluid video

playback as packet failures and resulting speed decreases occur frequently. Ironically, it seems the

mechanism widely credited with keeping the Internet alive may now be stunting its growth.

4. The Next-Generation Internet

Though issues with the Internet Protocol and Transmission Control Protocol are not disastrous,

they introduce significant roadblocks to the Internet's continued success. Fortunately for the 1.46 billion

people who enjoy or depend on the services provided by the Internet, many efforts are ongoing within

the computer science and networking fields to address these concerns. Some of the solutions are

temporary fixes aimed at extending the amount of time available to develop new remedies, while some

are sweeping changes that will require the adoption of entirely new technologies. The first set of fixes

target the weaknesses in the IPv4 standard, the most prominent suggestions being more efficient use of
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remaining addresses and deployment of the IPv6 standard to take advantage of its larger address space.

In addition, attention is being paid to TCP. Bringing data and the machines that serve them closer to

users is one option. Others include improving the efficiency of common transmission mediums and

installing new infrastructure capable of faster speeds and more concurrent traffic.

4.1. Internet Protocol Version 6

Leading the charge toward mitigating IPv4 address space depletion is the next version of the

Internet Protocol known as IPv6. Despite numerous improvements over IPv4, the most notable

enhancement in IPv6 for this discussion is the number of addresses allowed. Each IPv6 address takes

the form of eight colon-separated blocks, with an individual block comprised of a four-digit hexadecimal

number. A single hexadecimal number equals four binary bits, making each block sixteen bits long. Using

the same math demonstrated in the IPv4 calculation, this results in an enormous 2128, or 3.4 x 1038,

possible addresses. This number dwarfs the 4 billion addresses possible with IPv4 and is well suited to

support a world where not only humans are connecting to the Internet at a record pace, but devices

such as household appliances, cell phones, and cars are as well.

There are, however, quite a few challenges to the adoption of the IPv6 standard. The biggest is

an attitude among some in the computing industry that the IPv4 crisis is overblown. They argue that the

IPv4 address space is not as close to depletion as is generally perceived, and that a majority of those

calling for its replacement are doing so because they have a vested interest in the success of IPv6

(Golding, 2006). Their argument is substantiated by the lack of available addresses being due not to their

current use, but rather to hoarding. By allowing RIRs to sell IP addresses while prohibiting buyers from

reselling them, so the argument goes, inefficiencies now exist in the IP address market. In fact, the

"clearest evidence of wasted IP address space is the large amount of space that has been allocated to

users but is not present in the global routing table--over a third of allocated address space at last count"
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(Golding, 2006, p. 7). That implies that there are nearly 1.3 billion unused addresses which require only

relaxed rules to become available, the solution being market-based incentive for the hoarders to sell

their IP resources to those in need.

While this market-based approach may work, it is a short-term solution. Even with the release of

those unused, hoarded IP addresses, the lifespan of IPv4 is approximated to extend no further than

2026--and that is only if today's Internet consumption rates remain the same (Golding, 2006, p. 8). The

case for finding an alternative to IPv4 can still be made and points directly to IPv6.

4.2. Transmission Improvements

Another subset of modifications address the shortcomings of the Transmission Control Protocol.

As mentioned, long distances tend to increase the possibility of failure when sending packets. The

outcome of this is the inability for a TCP-based connection to maintain the high transfer speeds

necessary for rich Internet experiences. One idea for alleviating this is to bring data closer to users via

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). CDNs are geo-distributed servers that allow static content such as

videos and images to be uploaded to a central server and dispersed to nodes all over the world. The

benefit is that a user's request for content could go to the server geographically closest to them, thus

decreasing the distance the information has to travel and increasing both the speed at which it is

received and the probability of successful delivery.

A second option available is to improve the transmission mediums themselves, either by

implementing cutting-edge virtual technologies which greatly increase maximum speeds or by

leveraging new physical mediums whose speeds are naturally higher. Virtual solutions involve taking

further advantage of existing copper lines installed by telephone companies used ubiquitously today. A

leading potential technology in this arena is Dynamic Spectrum Management, or DSM. Most cable lines

today base transfer rates statically on the worst-case scenario to guarantee a consistent speed for users,
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an approach that often leaves the medium under-utilized (Cioffi, n.d.). DSM, however, observes

conditions in real-time and adjusts performance accordingly. This could lead to "DSL [Digital Subscriber

Lines] connections that top out at 100Mbps or more" (Anderson, 2006), a vast improvement over the

approximately 10Mbps maximum speed of DSL lines today. Faster transit speeds mean decreased

probability of failure and a more robust experience.

An alternate approach is to replace current mediums with newer ones whose speeds are

inherently faster. At the forefront of this is the switch from copper cables to fiber. With fiber, data are

transmitted by sending light pulses through glass or plastic tubes as opposed to electron signals sent

over copper wires. What results are transfer speeds measured in gigabits per second, which greatly

outpace megabit-per-second speeds of traditional cable lines (Scomptec, Inc., 2005). Add to this benefit

lower maintenance costs and the ability for fiber to span greater distances than copper without the

need for signal re-amplification (Scomptec, Inc., 2005), and the appeal of changing becomes apparent.

But transitioning to fiber has been difficult in the past due to higher costs of implementation and issues

with the fragility of the medium. That has changed recently, though, as "cost cuts for cabling and

components are being driven by improved production techniques, as well as the use of less expensive

connector materials" (Scomptec, Inc., 2005). The pros of using fiber may soon outnumber the cons,

leading to the implementation of a better medium likely to improve the Internet experience.

While no one of these individual fixes is a panacea for Internet growth, they combine to offer a

fundamental shift toward technologies necessary to handle the explosive expansion the Internet has

seen over the past decade and will continue to see in the coming years.
 The Internet Is Growing 20

5. Summary

A wide range of innovative services have been built upon the Internet and have attracted

hundreds of millions of people. Consequently, those people have come to rely on those products,

making the Internet an indispensable cornerstone of our progress over the last decade. And, though

only a fraction of the global population is currently able to enjoy its benefits, the tracks are being laid for

billions more to connect. But this exciting expansion of the Internet has proved both a blessing and a

burden.

Accompanying the benefits of growth have been issues with the Internet's underlying

technologies, and with them the question of their capability to support increased demand. New

protocols such as IPv6 and solutions to the speed and distance problems of TCP, such as improved

algorithms and new physical mediums like fiber, are paving the way for a new generation of Internet

use.

There remains a faction of people, however, who believe the potential problems are not

impending enough to warrant expedient investment. This attitude, while partly correct, is one that

should be tempered with the benefits of proactively addressing the issues, especially given the broad

negative impact a failure of the Internet could have. It has become a resource relied on by so many

because of its immense potential, potential which must be preserved for generations to come.
 The Internet Is Growing 21

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