The Internet needs a crying Indian - The ExaFlood

I like to think I'm a pretty environmentally conscious person. I recycle. I never leave the lights on . I try to drive as little as possible and I'm even on the town's environmental commission. So I often think about the consequences of my actions  and lately I've been wondering about how my online habits might be effecting the environment.

I'm a big fan of Internet Radio particularly Pandora and AOL. When I'm in the office I listen to it all day. Many times when I leave the room (or the building completely) I keep it playing even though no one is listening. So I started to think - " Am I being wasteful when I do this?"

The logical answer is that of course at some level I am but what would the damage be? Well according to this video create by a consortium of telco, cable and device companies I'm not just wasting the energy I'm also wasting bandwidth which will lead to "Internet Brown-outs" in the not too distant future.

What the they are telling us is that we are quickly exhausting the capacity of the networks that make up the Internet and that unless something is done there isn't going to be enough bandwidth to go around. Now I understand we need to take this with a grain of salt because of who and why the video was created but I tend to believe there is some element of truth in their claims.

In the interest of keeping this post short I'm not going to go into all the issues of how new services are consuming more bandwidth (I'm looking at you video) or how net neutrality issues are effecting this. I will say though that  you have to ask yourself some questions - every time I stream a radio station, download a movie, use my VOIP phone, etc. am I taking bandwidth away from someone else? Are they taking bandwidth away from me? And does my provider have the obligation to make sure I have cheap access to bandwidth no matter how I choose to use it?

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