Internet companies have been fighting the bandwidth war with one-another to deliver content faster and faster to no avail. However, my solution to this problem is not to widen the band, but to shorten the protocol. HTTP is dated. A protocol that takes into consideration what the internet is used for today(streaming movies, music, video chatting) would be slimmer, sleeker and therefore not require as much bandwidth to transmit its information. Imagine getting back onto dial-up simply because it could deliver the same information in the same time as Verizon's Fios.
Some progress as been made in the furnishing a new protocol for the internet. Internet2 is project available to a few research and education communities. In order to transmit its vast amounts of data, Internet2 uses its own protocol that boasts up to 100Gb/s. At such speeds, a movie download that would usually take around an hour, would literally download in the blink of an eye. Internet2, sadly, is not available at this time for personal use. I assume that finding the cure for cancer or crunching numbers for the betterment of human kind in has a higher affinity than pirating the newest Harry Potter movie.
Google also announced that they are working on a new protocol called SPDY (SPeeDY get it?) that promises to boost speeds by up to 55%. SPDY takes HTTP's inadequacy of downloading files and changes affinities so that larger files don't slow down smaller files while rendering. The next step for google is for browsers to adopt the SDPY protocol and then webmasters to do the same for their sites.
Ultimately, I see the release of a new, universal protocol within the next five years. The impact of such a protocol would curb the tension in the bandwidth war and allow websites to offer more streaming media.
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