A Net in neutral?

Is the Internet's growth slowing down? Andrew Odlyzko says it is.

From his vantage point on the fourth floor of the University of Minnesota's Walter Library, built in 1924, Odlyzko is counting traffic on the 21st-century Internet much as the Department of Transportation counts cars on a highway.

The director of the U's Digital Technology Center, Odlyzko says the rate at which traffic is growing has slowed to about 50 percent a year, based on a sampling of Internet hubs around the world. That's still substantial, but half what the rate was in 2001, and far less than it was in the torrid mid-1990s, when Internet traffic sometimes doubled every 100 days.

What's more, real Internet growth -- meaning more users, more websites and more services -- is less than 50 percent a year, he says. That's because many current Internet users are generating more traffic than they did a year ago by downloading big video files from various websites.

Traffic growth may be slowing for several reasons: The speed of computers isn't increasing as fast as it once did, nor is the amount of data that's being stored. In addition, it will take more time for everyone to embrace using the Internet, and some consumers just don't want to, he said.

A big implication

But what the slowdown in traffic growth means to Odlyzko is that the debate about the future of the Internet needs to tilt toward encouraging more use, not restricting it.

He's referring to congressional debate during the past year over "net neutrality" -- the issue of whether everyone's Internet traffic should be treated equally (as neutrality backers say), or whether high-volume senders of data should be charged more.

Network neutrality has pitted Internet companies Google, Microsoft, Amazon and eBay -- plus some special interest groups such as the Open Internet Coalition -- against big telecommunications companies such as AT&T, Verizon Communications and Comcast. The telecoms have opposed regulations that would prevent them from charging some websites fees for carrying big data files such as video.

Odlyzko is firmly in the net neutrality camp, saying that, if Internet growth is really slowing, there's no reason to ration bandwidth by charging some users more. Instead, he said, public policy should encourage even-handed pricing for all data distributed over the Internet so that the next generation of start-ups will be able to compete.

Some Internet analysts agree with Odlyzko.

"There doesn't seem to be this runaway traffic problem out there that would require carriers to charge more for some data packets, or to throttle down the speed of the data packets that don't pay extra," said Peter Sevcik, president of NetForecast in Charlottesville, Va.

But not everyone sees things that way.

The U.S. Department of Justice this month warned the Federal Communications Commission, which has the last word on Internet regulations, against implementing a policy of net neutrality. If telecom companies are prevented from charging fees to deliver data for high-volume content providers, it "could shift the entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements on to consumers," the Justice Department said.

Comcast more or less agrees. It concedes that Odlyzko is right about one thing: that the Internet has plenty of transmission capacity, considering the slowing traffic growth rate and the huge number of unused fiber-optic lines left over from the go-go dot-com investment period of the late '90s.

But Comcast says its cable TV network, which connects consumers to the Internet, doesn't have infinite capacity. Expensive upgrades will be needed as more people connect to the Internet at broadband speeds, and the unanswered question is who will pay for it. Should it be consumers (who pay now through user fees), or consumers plus big Internet companies that provide high volumes of content (and currently aren't charged for doing so)?

"Comcast is a big believer in growing Internet users and Internet usage," said Joe Waz, vice president of external affairs and public policy counsel at Comcast's Philadelphia headquarters. "But we don't know what business models for the future will best support more network investment. Rather than adopt regulations today ... we should let the marketplace develop" to see how the business evolves, he said.

Video downloads

Comcast says that it needs to be concerned about Internet traffic volume because video downloads might cause a sharp increase.

"I've seen other reports indicating a slowdown of global Internet traffic, but I've also seen reports the predict global Internet traffic to grow four times between now and 2011, driven by video," Waz said.

Odlyzko said it's an argument he's heard before.

"If everybody rushed to download video from the Internet, it couldn't be done," he said. "But people are pretty fixed in their habits. Just because 'Desperate Housewives' is available online doesn't mean everyone will download it." So far there's no sign of a video flood, he said.

Qwest, one of many large telephone companies with a stake in the net neutrality discussion, initially agreed to be interviewed about Odlyzko's work, but then declined.

A rare counting

Not many people have been able to count Internet traffic as Odlyzko does, because the big telecommunications companies tend to closely guard their traffic volumes for competitive reasons.

Odlyzko is offering free access to the data through his website, Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies, which can be found at www.startribune.com/a3337.

Odlyzko has worked around the dearth of public information about Internet traffic by pulling in statistics from 100 public data traffic hubs around the world. Called Internet Exchanges, they are places on the Internet where the various telecommunications companies hand off data traffic to one another. The 100 exchanges he has selected collectively handle 10 percent or more of the Internet's traffic, Odlyzko said.

Sevcik of NetForecast said Odlyzko is making a real contribution to public debate concerning the future of the Internet.

"I give Odlyzko credit for going as far as he did," Sevcik said. "My fear is that it will not be enough, and that we still need some authoritative place to get Internet traffic information. That's what federal government should be doing."

Steve Alexander • 612-673-4553

Steve Alexander • alex@startribune.com