I was chatting with a guest from US the other day and he brought up an interesting point. In many countries like Singapore, the Internet is the only common household utility that charges a flat fee and we could use as much as we wanted. Pretty much all around the globe people still pay a unit price for power, water, gas, TV and phone.
So what makes the Internet different?
The Internet is a utility that is capable of muti-tasking; almost anything can be carried via the Internet. Voice over IP (VoIP) and Skype are replacing traditional phones, IPTVs and YouTube are replacing broadcast TV channels, Instant Messaging and e-mails are replacing post mail and faxes. Many traditional businesses that were once profitable are slowly going out of business over the past 10 years (think Digital Cameras and film developers). It’s a scary phenomenon.
If only power and water were carried on the Internet.
This exponetial growth of the Internet needs some form of control, and the dirty truth is that ISPs that are overselling their bandwidth are rate limiting subscribers based on applications and protocols. Remember the days when we had to configure our browsers to use a proxy server? Not anymore. We are forced (albeit unknowingly) to use a proxy, whether you like it or not.
The fact is, bandwidth is expensive, and no ISP will let you leech them off for free. However, the other unknown fact is that most people really don’t need that 12mbps plan they subscribed. A typical home user is sufficient with a 512kbps-1mbps broadband. The reason why we think our 12mbps broadband isn’t enough is that we never really get even near 10% of that bandwidth (at least in Singapore) during peak hours, all thanks to our neighbours leeching off YouTube and P2P networks!
Don’t get me wrong. P2P is a good thing when used for the right reasons - what’s better than having your neighbours send you a file than having it downloaded across the Atlantic? P2P is the Internet’s way of bandwidth recycling.
HTTP and FTP protocols are ancient. Just like how plain HTML has evolved into AJAX sites and how IRC evolved into modern-day Instant Messengers, it’s time IETF did something new for the upcoming decade.
With the proliferation of bandwidth demanding content, we cannot continue to rely on traditional protocols. The future in the Internet is in P2P, but the current P2P community is constantly working against the will of ISPs. ISPs are constantly investing in cache technologies to have content served up locally, only to have the next release of some P2P client with a new 128-bit RSA encryption to prevent you from getting caught downloading an illegal copy of the latest blockbuster.
Can P2P be our savior in 2010? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Justin Lee is a freelance Web 2.0 and Systems Consultant for Securlogic Singapore and currently works closely with core ISP engineering teams in Singapore during his day job.