A current report
says there's been more high-speed fiber optic cable laid than we currently need, but at the end of the day, it's about routers being able to handle billions of bits of information. Meanwhile, the
heavy demand on router links grows, and if a few major outposts are taken out through earthquakes, shark bites (yep), or cyber terrorism, traffic would find another way, but the entire infrastructure
moves slower.
Blame it on the "YouTube generation" for wanting to stream video and download gigabytes of pirated (and in some cases legal) movies from Web-based file-sharing services. This is no longer the mid 1990s, when all users wanted to do was send a few emails. "In one day, YouTube sends data equivalent to 75 billion e-mails; so it's clearly very different," said Phil Smith, head of technology and corporate marketing at Cisco Systems.