Hard Limits on the Growth of the Internet and Computing Capacity

Abstract

The last few years have seen an explosion in the deployment and use of the Internet, networking and telecommunication technologies. This was followed by significant increases in the speed and capacity of computing, for example Petaflop supercomputers are becoming common. We will examine some of the developments; explain their importance and potential impact. Many forecasts and predictions have been made about the impact of the increases of computing capacity and the growth of the Internet and the world wide web. In this talk we will introduce some of the favorite predictions and will analyze the possibilities for their realization in the long run. The analysis shows that there exist hard limits on the growth of the Internet and the increase in computing capacity. They prove that it is unlikely that some of the predictions will hold in the long run. The restrictions are based on basic physical and economic limitations, which generate tight bounds on the realization of such predictions. The bounds will occur much faster than expected by the simple forecasters.

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