Are we running out of internet? It may sound like a strange question, but researchers meeting at the Royal Society in London this week discussed exactly that: the internet's upcoming "thorn", its capacity and what they can do about it.
The meeting sparked several headline-grabbing warnings of a "crowded" internet and the potential need to use a data bulletin, but the reality is more complex.
The crisis is real, and it's caused by the rapid growth of online media consumption through the likes of Netflix and YouTube, but physics and engineering can help us get through it. The internet just needs a few tweaks.
The fear of lack of capacity stems from a harsh physical truth – there is a limit to the amount of information that can fit on any communication channel, fiber optic cable or copper wire. Discovered in 1940 by Claude Shannon, this limit depends on the channel's bandwidth (the number of frequencies it can transmit) and its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
Digital traffic jam
The information capacity of optical fibers can be expanded by increasing the power of the light transmitted through them. This process amplifies the encoding signal, making it easier to read at the other end.
Researchers have spent decades finding ways to boost signals, increasing the capacity of fiber optics already in the ground to keep up with the growth of internet traffic.
But this trick has reached a dead end. Power can only reach a certain point, before the fiber saturates and the signal degrades. This means that the fibers we use today are approaching their full capacity.
René-Jean Essiambre of French communications company Alcatel-Lucent presented research suggesting that the limit of internet capacity is around 100 terabits per second, 250 Blu-ray discs. Fiber optic internet systems could reach that limit within the next five years, he warned.
Optical fibers with Optical fibers
But before you close your YouTube account, let's mention that David Richardson of the University of Southampton, in the United Kingdom, is researching new fibers containing multiple cores for transmitting data over the Internet.
These optical fibers are more difficult to manufacture than existing ones because the cores are very small and must maintain their shape throughout the length of the cable. However, they appear to offer the potential to carry a higher volume of data.
Techniques like these will be key to combating the capacity crisis, but if researchers are unable to scale up and commercialize their solutions, traffic reporting or other restrictions on internet may be the only option.
“I don’t see a crisis in the internet,” says Andrew Lord, a researcher in the UK at telecoms company BT. “I have great faith in human ingenuity,” he told New Scientist.
