In Progress

This article in Wired was a fascinating read especially right after having heard a presentation on the fiber optic cable industry. It seems Google/Youtube is a major player in this arena (I suppose there’s no point in being surprised about yet another area of the web that Google dominates) after having purchased unused fiber optic cable and using it to carry its traffic to other networks where it “peers” or trades traffic with other ISPs. This complicates the picture of an Internet controlled by an oligopoly of telecoms immensely.

From the article:
“The top 30 websites [serve] up 30 percent of net traffic, either from their own sets of pipes or from data centers around the world that connect much closer to your computer — and for much cheaper — than ever before.”

“In 2007, the majority of the internet’s traffic came distributed by 30,000 blocks of servers around the net. In 2009, 150 blocks served up half of the net’s traffic.”

“The real money is in the ads and services in the packets, not in moving the bits from computer to computer. The cost of bandwidth has fallen and so too have the profit margins for moving bits.”

Posted on October 17th, 2009 by DeepthiW
Filed under: Media, School