Must... download... porn... faster...

This isn't really all that new. It's been an ongoing process for quite some time, and it seems to get dug up every few months whenever tech news is slow. But I'll address it anyways.

The process for a new internet protocol is something that needs to happen. As it is, the internet is not very safe. It's also not that fast. The code is enough to get the job done but is fairly clunky. Even the way in which the packets are sent is cumbersome. That's why some very smart people from a slew of universities are working on Internet2. Though, one would think they could have come up with a better name. Or at least given it a revision stamp, like Web 2.0 got.

Engineers are developing a new type of Internet connection called a dynamic-circuit network that could carry so much data so quickly it might startle even Net surfers in Japan or South Korea. If all goes to plan, the vast data speeds required for such a collaboration may soon be available to all. That might go a long way to solving the problem of how to handle the enormous growth in Internet traffic, which by some estimates is doubling each year.

When a digital photo, YouTube clip or live streaming video is sent over the Internet, the data is first divided into packets, which are routed to the destination and then reassembled. This method tends to break down when large amounts of information are sent along similar pathways at the same time—the different packets are prone to getting hung up on bottlenecks. The result is a Web page that crashes or an online videoconference that sputters and skips. As the Internet starts to stagger under the weight of more and more data, such problems are increasingly common.

This really is becoming a major problem, whether you notice it or not, as bandwidth for so much of out multimedia-rich web traffic is becoming an ever increasingly enormous strain. And that's not just in the US, where our internet connections (despite inventing the fucking thing) are considered by most of Asia to be laughably pathetic. For example, Youtube is said to use up 10% of all internet traffic. P2P (peer to peer filesharing) is estimated to use 36% of internet traffic. Now, this kind of traffic is vastly different from your normal HTTP traffic of simply browsing sites. This is streaming content that is roughly 3+MB in filesize, in the case of Youtube, and most P2P files are 200MB-8GB. That's a lot of fucking 1's and 0's.

Some ISPs have suggested that Youtube should pay for some of this bandwidth that their site is using so much of. The assertion is that it's unfair for ISPs to take the brunt while Youtube receives massive profits from advertising revenue, none of which goes back to the ISPs that are actually connecting the users to such sites to create revenue. This is what Net Neutrality was really about. ISPs trying to essentially shake down sites that use large amounts of their bandwidth to ensure good connectivity. It's like saying that since a hot spot of town draws a lot of vehicular traffic, the city is going to charge those businesses more in taxes due to higher needs for road repair in that area.

One can argue whether such actions are permissible or not, but the real underlying issue is this: Using the same car analogy, imagine that these roads to this hot spot are all one lane roads without stop lights or stop signs. It's creating massive traffic backup. That's the problem with the internet as it currently stands. We are creating massive connectivity problems, and this is where an estimated half to two-thirds of our country has online access. Of which 80% use some form of broadband.

The potential difference in data speed is staggering. Whereas a PC can now stream two simultaneous video channels, on a dynamic-circuit network it could send 4,000 channels at once. Downloading a high-definition movie over a cable Internet connection of 4.5 megabytes per second would take about three hours. Over a 10-gigabit-per-second dynamic-circuit network, the same movie would download in five seconds.

Sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? However, one of the largest problems with fixing this issue is the fact that our communication infrastructure is old as shit and not built to reliably handle such data.

Dynamic-circuit network technology would solve the bottleneck problem by opening up a dedicated route from one point to another through which data can be sent without interruption, at speeds thousands of times faster than what's possible now. Just as quickly, the pathway can be closed and space made available for the next connection. The technology would require some new software and fiber-optic links right up to the PC, but otherwise no change in infrastructure.
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Oh, that's all we need? Just a few fiber optic cables strung across the entire USA, connecting into every house in every city and town? Yeah, that seems hella easy. Especially considering there are still towns in the USA that don't even have fucking telephones. Yeah, that's right. Not even fucking regular ring-a-ding landline telephones.

While Internet1 is open to pretty much anyone with a computer, access to Internet2 is limited to a select few, and its backbone is made up entirely of large-capacity fiber-optic cables.
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Not to shit on the idea behind Internet2, it sounds pretty great, but you must consider that in the USA fiber optics only account for 2% of all connections. Korea, on the other hand, is at a beefy 24% with Japan (of course) leading at 31%. Worldwide, fiber is 10% of all connections. (Source) Maybe it's just me, but it seems that trouncing Internet2 for the USA is putting the buggy before the horse.