The world wide web is in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own popularity and will have to be rebuilt as the number of people going online around the world increases exponentially, scientists have warned.
Patrick Gelsinger, the chief technology officer at Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker, told a technical conference in San Francisco that internet users were “running up on some architectural limitations”.
It is feared that an influx of new users could prove too much for a system underpinned by technology that dates back to the birth of the video arcade, when games such as Pac Man represented the latest in hi-tech entertainment.
Today, more than half of British homes are online. It is thought, however, that the arrival of China’s massive population into the digital age could stretch the current system beyond breaking point.
Advertisement
The internet has transformed the business environment since access to the web became widely available in the second half of the 1990s with billions of pound worth of transactions made daily. The online auction house eBay notched up sales worth more than £400 million in the three months to July alone.
Mr Gelsinger recommended building a new network over the current one, which is based on technology developed in the 1970s. The new network would monitor and direct online traffic and fight security threats or surges in usage.
Such a model already exists in the form of a system called PlanetLab - a collection of 429 computer “nodes” in 181 sites around the world.
PlanetLab, which is funded by Intel, has won support from 150 universities, including Cambridge and Princeton, and corporations including Hewlett-Packard and AT&T.
But while such a model is based on Intel hardware and software, much of the internet infrastructure is controlled by another computer giant, Cisco.
Advertisement
Other computer and communications companies including Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and AT&T, share the fears, and are working to find a solution.