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:
“Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The frequent failure of men to cultivate their capacity for listening has a profound impact on their capacity for parenting, for it is mothers more than fathers who are most likely to still their own voices so they may hear and draw out the voices of their children.”
—Mary Field Belenky (20th century)