Internet Bandwidth Not an Endangered Beast, After All

Pay no attention to rumors that the internet is getting full: the internet can eat 50 eggs.

In fact, over the last 12 months, international net bandwidth in backbone grew 62 percent, while internet traffic grew only 53 percent and filled only 43 percent of the tubes' capacity at peak times, according to a new report released by bandwidth-monitoring firm TeleGeography.

In short, the internet's tubes are growing faster than even YouTube videos can fill them, and they're in no danger of filling up anytime soon.

That's despite the occasional Chicken Little proclamation from ISPs, pending caps on 'unlimited' internet usage and hand-wringing over peer-to-peer file sharing of movies such as Cool Hand Luke.

In the same time period -- mid-2007 to mid-2008, Latin America and South Asia both doubled the capacity of their backbones -- the net's fiber-optic equivalent of a highway system.

Wholesale prices for sending and receiving data continue to fall, and with the cheapest prices in North America and Europe, where there's still more abundant capacity, the Global Internet Geography report found.

Though the report does not mention it, the expansion of global capacity -- especially fiber-optic lines that don't hit U.S. shores -- makes it harder for the U.S. government to wiretap the net, since increasingly net traffic stays local or takes a short route that doesn't go through the U.S.

But take all of the above with a pinch of salt, since the report isn't science.

Data on the net's size, capacity and even links are difficult to come by, since almost all of the infrastructure is privately owned, and there's little incentive and few requirements to share data with governments or scientists.

Without open internet data or even data about the data, there is no science.

Telegeography says it gathers its data at internet exchange points around the globe and from surveys. As for the future, the company says to expect much of the same: "strong growth and falling prices."

The full report will run you $5,000, but Telegeography offers the executive summary (.pdf) for free.

by Ryan Singel for Wired.com

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