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Will video crash the Internet? - August 14, 2007

Today's Wall Street Journal banners a must-read [$$] on the front of the Marketplace section delving into question of whether the growing popularity of video on the Internet is really likely to strain network capacity to the breaking point.

The piece cites a January report by Deloitte Touche predicting the Internet "could be approaching its capacity" in 2007. "Our belief is we'll start to see some brownouts or service slowdowns or service issues," analyst Phil Asmundson said.

But it also plugs a study from network equipment maker Cisco, apparently due out today, predicting that Internet infrastructure capacity will keep up with traffice "for the foreseeable future."

The Cisco study acknowledges that video will be responsible for "a significant portion" of the growth in Internet traffice from 2006 to 2011, according to the Journal, but argues it won't overwhelm the system because network operators are deploying more sophisticated technology to manage the flow (supplied, presumably, by Cisco).

The Journal acknowledges the dueling perspectives hold "political implications" for the debate over network neutrality. But as I discussed in yesterday's post, the argument over raw capacity actually threatens to drown out the more critical debate over who gets to "shape" the flow of traffic on the Internet and under what rules, if any.

UPDATE: The Cisco research is available in two parts here and here.

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