What Hides behind the Internet Traffic Conundrum

The Science and Technology section of The Economist featured couple months ago an article about a new hypothesis of three physicists. Based on Braess's paradox, they assert that the delays and traffic jams from the major cities', such as Boston, New York and London, can be reduced by closing some other roads the drivers would use in case of a snarl-up. When trying to apply the same theory to routers, wires and bytes, the results could be slightly different.

The Internet traffic is already creeping through "narrow pipes", as more and more Web surfing experiences are YouTube^® and podcast driven. Rather than "closing" links to optimize its use, the Internet infrastructure currently serving 1,463,632,361 users continues to develop, and, more important, to expand towards the (almost) "virgin territories".

According to Cisco Visual Networking Index, the Internet traffic will increase at a combined annual growth rate of 46 percent from 2007 to 2012, nearly doubling every two years. The Top 3 Intraregional Broadband Network Developers counts Latin America (61% growth), EU (around 50%) and APAC (44%).

Whether we talk about the multiplication of optical subsea cables, the ascent of satellite high-speed Internet providers, or the development of new MANs and WANs using state of the art technology and components, the efforts (and, of course, the money) concentrate especially towards these three unexploited markets, leaving the U.S. somewhat behind (or, if you prefer, outside) the ascendant trend.

The long-term consequence would be the loss of some other strategic advantages - pleased read economic, politic and military. As a recent NY Times article points out, because Internet infrastructure rapidly expands outside the American borders and subsequently the traffic that moves through the "informational pipe" is bypassed to some extent, their control no longer concentrates towards the west of the Atlantic.

This also translates as more and more data transiting other territories as well as new "data alliances and coalitions", which prefer to send and receive information via servers located in specific countries, while keeping themselves away from some other machines considered as non-grata. Would this mean that we are approaching some sort of new Internet-traffic Cold War era? Hopefully not.

However, for those concerned about privacy and reliability, the question that rises would be: should this ultimately mean a safer infrastructure, in terms of confidentiality and classification, or just a little "broader" community of wiretappers?

P.S.: As a passionate driver, I noticed that, unless a serious accident occurs on the highway, most of the traffic jams take place in junction points or traffic nodes. I don't know if you remember this spring's "phlashing" endeavor - the one that HP researchers concocted to demonstrate how a Permanent Denial-of-Service (PDOS) could be accomplished via the simple update of a router's firmware - but, to play a sort of Jerry Fletcher part (the charcter that Mel Gibson portrayed in the previously mentioned movie), I may dare to ask: is this just another warning signal (something like "Junction Work Ahead") or more than that?