[LINK] Fwd: vip-l: Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet

[Paul Brooks]

> discuss:
> 
> 
> >Daily Times - Site Edition
> >
> >Monday, November 21, 2005
> >
> >Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet
> >
> >Machines will overtake humans to become the biggest users of the Internet in
> >a brave new world of electronic sensors, smart homes, and tags that track
> >users’ movements and habits, the UN’s telecommunications agency predicted.
...
> >launched at a UN summit said. “Today, in the 2000s, we are heading into a
> >new era of ubiquity, where the ‘users’ of the Internet will be counted in
> >billions
> >and where humans may become the minority as generators and receivers of
> >traffic,” it added.

I would agree this is likely to happen sooner, rather than later. I don't 
remember the source, but I've seen recent reports claiming that a large 
proportion of the backbone traffic is now bittorrent traffic - many 
people's PCs are set to autonomously download files based on constantly 
updated IRC triggers, RSS triggers, USENET news, etc until its local 
storage is filled, while the 'user' checks in periodically to see the 
'interesting' material and delete the rest to make room for more - its 
the human's 'autonomous agent' causing the traffic, not the human.

In fact, on the my home LAN the 24x7 background of heartbeat packets, 
DHCP updates, SNMP traps and queries, and automated backup streams 
amongst the machines in my house could possibly already exceed the 
traffic I generate personally through email and web browsing in the few 
hours I get to do so.

---  
Dr Paul Brooks                 |      pbrooks at bwp.net.au
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