• The New York Times, Thursday, March 13, 2008 11 AM

Fears about the Internet clogging aren't so much unfounded as they are misguided. Even if our worst bandwidth fears were realized, the Internet wouldn't simply stop working, although users would experience slowness in downloading content and using certain data-heavy services. "The Internet doesn't collapse, but there would be a growing class of stuff you just can't do online," said Johna Till Johnson, president of Nemertes Research, which projected last fall that user demand on the Web would outweigh network capacity by 2011.

Supply is being soaked up by a tremendous increase in amount of information being exchanged over the Web. A professor from the University of Minnesota estimates that Web traffic is growing by 50 percent a year. The technology for managing traffic is also improving. Routers are relaying data faster and software for managing data packets is getting smarter, making fiber optic transmission smoother.

Still, the threat of an Internet slowdown in America remains, something lawmakers will consider in drafting the nation's broadband policy, which will most likely occur when a new administration takes over next year. The U.S. doesn't want to lag behind in Web innovation because its networks are too slow.

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