Network Capacity
The fundamental problem is that all network resources are limited, including router processing time and link throughput.
For example:
- Today's (2006) wireless LAN effective bandwidth throughput (15–100Mbit/s) is easily filled by a single personal computer.
- Even on fast computer networks (e.g. 1 Gbit), the backbone can easily be congested by a few servers and client PCs.
- Because P2P scales very well, file transmissions by P2P have no problem filling and will fill an uplink or some other network bottleneck, particularly when nearby peers are preferred over distant peers.
- Denial-of-service attacks by botnets are capable of filling even the largest Internet backbone network links (40 Gbit/s as of 2007), generating large-scale network congestion.
Read more about this topic: Network Congestion
Famous quotes containing the words network and/or capacity:
“How have I been able to live so long outside Nature without identifying myself with it? Everything lives, moves, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays, emanating either from myself or from others, cross the limitless chain of created things unimpeded; it is a transparent network that covers the world, and its slender threads communicate themselves by degrees to the planets and stars. Captive now upon earth, I commune with the chorus of the stars who share in my joys and sorrows.”
—Gérard De Nerval (1808–1855)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)