Is there a limit to the size of the internet?

Question

Please star if you found this question thought provoking.

Answer 1

catarthur is almost correct. The number of IP addresses limits the number of directly addressable hosts on the Internet. One such host can be a gateway to another network of comparable size. Each host in that network can be a gateway to net another network. For all practical purposes, this makes the size of the Internet unlimited. For those few cases where we really want a single host addressable across the entire Internet, IPV6 raises that limit significantly. If someday that is no longer enough, we'll define another version of IP that raises it again, perhaps in a way that is fundamentally unlimited, such as a variable-length IP address whose length is not limited.

Answer 2

Often limitations are realized in the electronics.
I mean the physical limitations of the electronics involved. Often this is where the best of plans fall short. Many times a program is written to handle X Billions, but ultimately because of the electronic limitations it can only handle X/3 Billions, for example.

Since speed is the golden goose that everyone is after, and this requires computer resources, it is only logical to assume that one high speed connection will take as much resources as several dial up connections, perhaps as much as six times. So this will leave less resources for the next connection, and to run other software. Since there is a limited number of IP addresses we are limited to how many servers can be added to the network, and how many personal computers can inherit these addresses, in turn.
But ultimately, you can have as many as you wish but it will come down to the speed of the electronics for processing the electric signals. So the limits comes down to two factors. The communications satalites, and the server's processing ability.

Answer 3

Right now it is limited by the number of IP addresses =
2^32 = 4 294 967 296

But IPV6 will soon boost that number =
2^128 = 3.4e+38

Which is infinite for any practical purpose.

Answer 4

Over 1.114 billion people use the internet; nothing can be infinite, but the technology defines no limitation.

Scientists hope to, one day, provide internet access to astronauts and others living/staying on planets elsewhere in the solar system.

Answer 5

Yes there is. It is limited by the number of networked PCs using the internet and this is always a finite number and always will be. Now calculating that current number is another thing.

Answer 6

It is expanding all the time as required,there seems to be no limit.

Answer 7

no people just keep on adding to the internet

Answer 8

To answer your question (which asks essentially to predict the future of the Internet) you must consider the following:

New cable, wireless, satellite, and routing technologies are only the beginning of the future for the Net.

For example, a select few universities and government agencies, with the help of 13 corporate partners (including Cisco, MCI, Nortel, and Qwest), are building a new Internet, dubbed (cleverly enough) Internet2. This second network will run over two backbones: Qwest's and the Very High Speed Backbone Network Service (or VBNS), a noncommercial backbone run by MCI WorldCom and the National Science Foundation -- and connect to those universities and agencies at gigapops -- network points of presence capable of transferring data at 1 gbps.

The catch: Internet2 will connect only academic and government users. The rest of us will benefit indirectly, though, as high-bandwidth Internet2 applications trickle down. "You'll see greatly improved multimedia and videoconferencing," says Vab Goel, Qwest's director of IP network engineering. For example, Internet2 engineers are developing techniques for tagging voice data packets so they get a higher priority as they pass over the network.

Another promising development is coming from a branch of physics called photonics. Right now, information travels down fiber-optic cables in the form of laser-generated light. Photonics studies ways of manipulating those light waves to increase fiber's transmission capabilities. One photonics scheme, Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM), sends multiple frequencies of light down the same fiber at the same time. Sprint's Mike Grubbs estimates that DWDM has already increased his company's fiber capacity by a factor of 32. "In the next few years," he says, "we hope to increase that to 100-fold or more." The cable ISP @Home recently signed a deal with AT&T to use the latter's DWDM-based backbone to carry its data traffic.

SilkRoad, a San Diego-based telecommunications and consulting company, has patented another photonics technology dubbed Refractive Synchronization Communication, which has demonstrated data transfer rates of 200 gbps over 200 miles, without signal amplification, on a single wavelength of light; the fastest fiber in use today maxes out at 40 gbps. SilkRoad says that it's negotiating with local telephone companies and large carriers that could roll out RSC technology by this summer. By fall it expects to offer local area network RSC-enabled hubs and switches for use by businesses and homes that have fiber connections. Some analysts predict that the entire Internet backbone will be using photonics of some sort within the next five years.

Pass the bottleneck
What you've got, then, is a game of musical bottlenecks: As one segment of the Net accelerates, the others must scramble to keep up. Right now, the bottleneck is at the desktop. As cable and DSL roll out, ISPs and backbone providers will have to speed up their segments to accommodate the new traffic. In the words of Technology Futures analyst Larry Vanston, "We'll be chasing around bottlenecks for the rest of our lives."

The question is, who's going to pay for the chase? Not surprisingly, the consensus among industry observers is that you, the end user, will -- but nobody wants to say how much. Vendors will likely try a variety of price points for broadband connections before the market settles the issue. It's probably safe to say you won't get that multimegabit-per-second connection for $19.95 a month. If users start buying all their communications services from a single company, a national case of sticker shock could ensue. "Most people don't realize how much they pay for these individual services," says Bob Hafner, Gartner Group vice president and research director, "until they see it all in one place."

You may not mind paying the price if the Internet's taking care of all your communications needs. Just pray it doesn't crash.

Bandwidth bestiary
Networking is rife with gobbledygook. Here are some of the key concepts, in plain English.


ATM: Asynchronous Transfer Mode, a network technology supporting fast transfers of data, voice, and video.

Backbone: The thousands of miles of extremely-high-bandwidth fiber-optic cable connecting major metropolitan areas.

Bandwidth: The amount of data, usually expressed in megabits per second, an electronic line can transmit.

Broadband: Describes high-bandwidth services such as DSL and cable.

Circuit switching: How the plain old telephone system (POTS) works: The phone company establishes a dedicated circuit across its lines from caller to callee.

DSL : Digital Subscriber Line, a technology that allows for high-speed data communications (starting at 144 kbps) over regular copper phone lines.

Internet2: A new Internet, available only to government and academic users, optimized to carry multimedia as well as data.

IP: Internet Protocol, the "IP" in TCP/IP. The set of rules and standards that govern how packets of data are sent and received over the Internet.

Packet switching: How most data networks work. Data is divided into packets, with the destination computer's network address appended to each. Hardware along the network examines these addresses and forwards the packets accordingly.

Router: The hardware that ties the Internet together, routers forward packets from one network to another.

Dr. H