You Think Bandwidth Is Expensive NOW!?

Get ready to open your wallet.  There’s going to be a huge growth in data traffic and it’s going to force all the ISP’s, networks and data transporters to charge more.  Why?  Because it’s going to take so much bandwidth that Julius Genachowski – yes, I know he’s out but he's the bandwidth-for-everyone champion – will be (as they say in Kentucky) batting his eyes like a bullfrog in a hailstorm. 

 

And another “why?”  

 

Because people always find a “way around.”  Another term:  “unintended consequences.”

 

When met with a challenge, creative folks always find a way around.  This time the challenge is unwanted monitoring of messages and other communication.  And the way around? Well, from what I’m reading, it’s scary.   

 

Here’s the thinking – and I’m seeing it on blogs and posts all over the place…people encouraging others to send the systems into overload.  They want folks to send so many messages that those seeking to monitor them can’t possibly track them all – even with programs from Algorithm City they’ll be frustratingly unable to look at it all.  But in order to overload the system, it’ll overload the system.  Hello, master of doublespeak.  Do you know what you just wrote?  

 

Yeah.  That overload will definitely frustrate the lurkers but it’ll also cost all of us.  First off in slowed communication as existing networks bog down and then in higher costs as networks have to add bandwidth to accommodate the additional traffic.  And they’re talkin’ about not 10 times but 10 THOUSAND times – or possibly a hundred thousand or a million or more times.  

 

Then, add to that the prospect that legitimate emails and attachments will be buried inside longer messages, “Nah, nah-nah-na-na-nah – try to find the real message,” which may increase the size of existing messages by a factor of X, where X=”a lot bigger number than you think.”  For that, how big does the pipe have to be?  

 

If you think that Netflix® video is slow now, just wait.  

 

What’s the real fix?  Take away the lurkers.  Let the medium run without the fear that someone’s monitoring it all.  Set rules that are very plain – and enforced – that limit lurking and monitoring.  So, regardless of which side of the lurker ops you stand, security or intrusion, be ready to spend some extra dough until the monitors return to sanity.