Vassar Technology Today | Overdependence on bandwith is a disaster waiting to happen

Matthew Leung Managing Editor

Our complaints about the slowness of bandwidth at Vassar are like our complaints about congestion on the highway: During rush hour, the demand for roadway seems unlimited. But on the entire global scope of bandwidth usage, the availability of bandwidth is actually meeting, if not surpassing, the demand. Even though Peer-to-Peer traffic consumes 60 percent of all available bandwidth today and bandwidth demand grew 42 percent in 2004 and another 30 percent in 2005, the rapid construction of new bandwidth by Internet Service Providers (ISP) ,including new fiber optic infrastructures, kept the Internet flowing.

One exponential increase in the Internet bandwidth consumption is caused by forms of communication, such as voice, television, and radio, using the Internet to transport data. Even postal mail can now be sent and received via the Internet. Television and movies can also be streamed through the Internet in high-quality formats so that consumers can save the hassle of getting satellite or installing cable installed at home.

The integration of these forms of communication is paralleled by the continually expanding options consumers have to connect to the Internet. Now, making the connection can not only occur through wireless points, cellular networks, satellites, cable, telephone line and dedicated line, but also through the good old power line. And the options are continuing to grow.

These two phenomena prove that we use the Internet more often now than ever. But behind this increase in usage is the detrimental effect of over-dependence on the bandwidth of the Internet.
However, the Internet’s bandwidth is only one method of transporting data. Similar to how networks of railroads, subways and water passages serve as alternatives to the highway system, the telephone network, Cablevision network, and cellular network function as other methods of information transportation.

Heavier dependence on the Internet network is like greater dependence on the highway system: Instead of investing in railroads, subways, waterways and airways, companies continue to use the highway system instead. Resources shift to strengthen the national highway system, but this seems like putting all the eggs into one basket: A natural disaster could make traveling on highways impossible while leaving other networks, like the railroad, subway, waterway and airway, unaffected. The merge to singular dependence on any network is poor planning.

A case in point is the bird flu. Information Technology (IT) professionals have long speculated that a national pandemic such as an outbreak of bird flu could easily clog up the Internet. Once an outbreak occurs, employees would have to work at home, using the Internet to send and retrieve data from their central offices. This sudden surge in usage would deplete all available bandwidth on the Internet and cause an international shortage. If data for all forms of communication such as telephone, radio and television systems depends on the Internet, worldwide communication may one day shut down.

This argument has some gaps, but such a scenario is not difficult to imagine. For example, an outbreak of a computer worm name Code Red in July of 2001 infected more than 350,000 servers, which it used to flood the servers of the White House with so much traffic that not only was the White House’s Web site unavailable for a few days, but a large portion of the Internet became vulnerable to shutting down. Had the worm flooded the public Internet with random data instead of just the White House’s servers, the entire Internet would have been at the mercy of the worm.

On the other hand, although the bandwidth of the Internet network’s expansion is built upon existing networks like the cellar, cable, and telephone network, if bandwidth were to fail, basic communication using the other networks would still be possible. An outbreak of the bird flu or computer viruses might stop you from getting television, radio, and telephone through the Internet, but as long as the Internet is not your only connection to communicate with the rest of the world, it’s OK to rely on it for recreational uses.