Doesn’t this mean that the i/o load on the internet will get increased dramatically due to these pods constantly communicating back and forth with each other and the end users/visitors?
I thought it already was increasing dramatically 
.
The number of people using the world wide web, and the number of websites and the number of servers, has been increasing rapidly year on year. Kids are now using phones that were only used by adults a few years ago, and countries that had hardly any web access a few yeas ago are now all switched on.
The argument about whether the web could cope with the extra load is exactly the argument being used not all that long ago about the extra load caused by viewing video on computers. Now everyone is viewing video on their phones and using smart TV’s to stream TV into their homes.
That is correct, however the increase is likely on major peering routes that connect local areas to major providers. Like the major switches that connect, say, greater NY area to the broader internet, from there to say Youtube etc.
The locals in greater NY area are not pulling massive amounts of data within that network from each other. The data flows to their local switch/hub, from there it is distributed in much smaller quantities to locals.
As far as what i understood from the format, a decent amount of traffic and i/o is going to be diverted to the local/area network rather than major backbones and local distribution centers.
I am all for the project and i couldnt have it take over the internet sooner than ‘now’. But im having some difficulty in wrapping my head around how the i/o and relevant processing load will affect smaller parts of internet and local networks.
I think we should not only consider, if it is possible for the web to cope with higher bandwidth, but also at what consequences it comes.
There are several disadvantages of a higher bandwidth. One of the main issues I see is the higher energy consumption which will have a negative impact on the climate (as a side note: the entire information and communications technology ecosystem has the same emissions footprint as aviation¹). Furthermore, this will favor countries or social classes who can afford the infrastructure for this and will (in relative numbers) leave others behind. For those, who can’t afford appropriate technology this could mean longer loading times or even the impossibility to use specific services. Also it feels like it is more vulnerable to single pods being unavailable, if everyone can self-host their own pod (but I guess if they are commercially hosted it should be no problem).
I definitely don’t want to say that higher bandwidth is a no-go. I just want that we keep these issues in the back of our mind when designing services and keep the bandwidth as low as possible.
(1) How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity
1 Like
Tim, can I host POD servers on standard internet subdomains?
Yes. A pod is like a website.
1 Like