Table of Contents

• Bigger data centers and cables are not the solution
• Finding the solution

• Huge Pressure after a 500% Increase since 2009
• The Average home has 7 Internet Connected Devices

Internet service providers reported staggering growth over the past decade. Talktalk saw a massive 500% internet traffic increase in the 7 years since 2009. That’s quite eye-watering, especially when placed next to other infrastructures. Imagine roads, trains, water or electricity trying to cope with this growing demand.

And yet we still expect and need more from the internet with data consumption still surging 22% a year. We’re 20 years into the internet Millenium, the .com bubble is a distant blip on the radar, but for many people, the internet remains temperamental, slow and expensive.

Sure we can use the telephone at the same time as the internet, god bless broadband. Despite this, we still experience slow delivery of data especially when the whole country is online.

The average household now has more than 7 internet-connected devices. Statista reports that in 2020 there will be 6.58 connected devices per person globally. With a 7.5 billion global population that’s 50 billion devices. Demand is indeed exponentially growing as is expected and with a current infrastructure built on a patchwork of copper wire, fiber and satellite, demand is outstripping growth.

Source: Link

People want more internet and more cloud storage. We don’t use floppy disks, cd ROMs or even external hard drives to store our data anymore. Data is heavy, precious and entrusted to large centralized data centers. With all this demand these centers can’t cope. Users can’t access their data with simultaneous efficiency. 

Think of data centers like car parks with everybody trying to come and go through a small road network. Quite quickly you get data traffic jams. Mobile data traffic grew 71% in 2017, which means people are constantly needing bandwidth and data no matter where they are. It’s a constant demand.

Source: Link

Bigger data centers and cables are not the solution

Data companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon now replicate their data at centers around the world routing user queries to the nearest hub. Unfortunately, this only exacerbates the demand problem. Synchronization of these huge data centres consumes more bandwidth than all public internet traffic.

Plus the centralization of data means it often has to travel thousands of miles back and forth. Not only is this slow, long journeys expose data to 3rd party interference and movement through international borders. The infrastructure can’t keep up and huge data centers are quickly becoming unsustainable. In 2020, the data equivalent of every movie ever made will cross the Internet every 120 seconds. 2% of the world's greenhouse gasses are produced from running the internet which is comparable to the airline industry.

Finding the solution

Some blockchain companies are looking to implement  are now trying to solve the problem.

ThreeFold, for example, focuses on building a decentralized, scalable, environmentally friendly, sustainable and neutral internet. A responsible internet for all. The ThreeFold grid offers autonomous storage, maintained by the ThreeFold Token (TFT), enabling more security and data storage closer to the end-user resulting in speed, efficiency, and lower cost.

In 2020 all humans should have an equal opportunity to the internet for education, communication and information. Redistributing the way we hold data is a way we can make the internet advantageous to everyone, not just large corporations who misuse and profit from our data.

Using collectively owned autonomous server providers that can be deployed anywhere and everywhere redistributes the power away from data centers and high-income areas. It’s not hard to see the benefits of redistributing the internet for everyone’s benefit. Developers and businesses who want a cost-effective sustainable alternative to centralized cloud providers are already seeing the benefits of new decentralized solutions.