Traffic Jams

One of the themes that resonates in visitor commentary across all industry verticals and that plays quite frequently into site satisfaction--whether it be in e-comm, automotive, hospitality, even government--is that sites need to load fast and efficiently. In an inversion of the classic tortoise and hare fable, the fastest site always wins, period. Fast page loading minimizes the overhead strain on the visitor and turns his or her attention towards content.

But how much of this is really within the control of the site owner? Deeper and more foreboding forces seem to be at work. Despite the very thorough propagation of broadband connectivity, we're increasingly seeing the signs of online gridlock and the unfortunate reality that there are virtual traffic jams brewing. ISPs are all fighting an uphill battle against the terabytes of data being transmitted through routers with finite bandwidth, but the free content utopia is an insatiable polity, whose appetite for digitally-transmitted audio and video is seemingly infinite.

Can we really grind the internet to a halt with all the data we're transmitting? Opinion is divided. Some see weakness in the many copper-based end connections through which most internet users get online; others point out that the strength of the internet's real backbone--the miles of optic fiber that have been laid--precludes it from collapsing under its own weight.

All I know is that when I worked for a major Canadian telco, our retention team was instructed to tell high-risk cancellation clients that certain other broadband ISPs were throttling bandwidth for users who were addicted to Torrents and other P2P transmission. That scared most of them back into our arms.