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Stress Fractures in the Internet by 2012

Growth of new applications, trend towards ‘flattening’ of the Internet, IP-address exhaustion could lead to a return to dedicated networks

New York, NY – Nov. 19, 2008 –
Demand pushing against physical and logical limitations is stressing the Internet according to Nemertes Research’s study Internet Interrupted: Why Architectural Limitations Will Fracture the ‘Net.” Internet demand continues to outpace growth in network capacity at the access layer, and IP addresses are quickly depleting.

A follow-up to last year’s landmark report, The Internet Singularity Delayed: Why Limits in Internet Capacity Will Stifle Innovation on the Web, the latest study finds demand continues to grow swiftly—driven by more Internet-connected devices and new bandwidth-hungry applications. Traffic is migrating away from the public core of the Internet and onto private and semiprivate overlay networks.

“The Internet is shape-shifting” says Ted Ritter, research analyst with Nemertes Research. “Traffic is increasingly moving off the public Internet onto paid or private overlay networks. Content providers—such as NBC, which used Limelight Networks to stream the 2008 Olympics—are driving the trend toward a flattening, and shifting of the Internet.”

The result for users is improved service quality for favored content, and over time, the performance distinction between “favored” and “general-delivery” content will increase. “None of this means the Internet will abruptly stop working,” says Ritter. “Instead, the slowdown will be in the area of innovation. Ultimately, access bandwidth limitations will hamper deployment of next-generation applications.”

The study also looked at its logical infrastructure. The Internet is rapidly running out of addresses to assign to new networks and devices—85% of addresses already are allocated. Address exhaustion will occur before 2012 in the face of the accelerating growth of the number of Internet-enabled devices and of machine-machine communications.

“Requirements for multi-homing—providing multiple, separate routes to a given address—and ever-increasing mobility are placing added stress on the current Internet logical infrastructure,” says Dr. Mike Jude, senior analyst with Nemertes Research. “In effect, the Internet could fracture back into groups of networks.”

The report shows how IPv6, the presumed successor to the current Internet Protocol addressing scheme (IPv4), is too little too late. Only 1% of IT decision-makers participating in Nemertes benchmark, Advanced Communications Services 2008, are deploying IPv6.

To read the complete study, visit Internet Interrupted: Why Architectural Limitations
Will Fracture the ‘Net, [1]”.

About Nemertes Research

Nemertes Research is a research-advisory firm that specializes in analyzing and quantifying the business value of emerging technologies. You can learn more about Nemertes Research at our Website www.nemertes.com [2].