Two stories in the news point to the growing stress the communication age is putting on our infrastructure. According to ABI Research, cable providers could be approaching a crisis in capacity in their last-mile systems. As video on demand, online gaming and high definition television eat up more and more capacity, customers may find themselves on the slow end of a battle with their neighbors for packet priority. An analogy might be the line that would form at the only well in a neighborhood where everyone is putting in pools.
Others question whether the tubes of the internet's backbone are large enough to serve the dramatically increasing call on them. Total capacity usage is roughly doubling every two years. Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) estimates it will reach almost 8 million terabytes per month by 2011.
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