Forty years after it was invented, the Internet is straining under the weight of cyber attacks, multimedia content and new mobile applications. In response, U.S. computer scientists are re-thinking every aspect of the Internet’s architecture, from IP addresses to routing tables (See Network World’s story 2020 Vision: Why you won’t recognize the ‘Net in 10 years) to overall Internet security. Here are a few ideas from Network World.com to describe how internet speed will change the world by 2020:
More people will use the Internet.
Today’s Internet has 1.7 billion users, according to Internet World Stats. This compares with a world population of 6.7 billion people. There’s no doubt more people will have Internet access by 2020. Indeed, the National Science Foundation predicts that the Internet will have nearly 5 billion users by then.
The Internet will be more geographically dispersed.
Most of the Internet’s growth over the next 10 years will come from developing countries. The regions with the lowest penetration rates are Africa (6.8%), Asia (19.4%) and the Middle East (28.3%), and therefore the internet will have to support more languages.
The Internet will be wireless.
The number of mobile broadband subscribers is exploding, hitting 257 million in the second quarter of 2009, according to Informa. Currently, Asia has the most wireless broadband subscribers, but the growth is strongest in Latin America. By 2014, Informa predicts that 2.5 billion people worldwide will subscribe to mobile broadband.
The Internet will be greener.
Internet operations consume too much energy today, and experts agree that a future Internet architecture needs to be more energy efficient. The trend towards greening the Internet will accelerate as energy prices rise, according to experts pushing energy-aware Internet routing.