It鈥檚 official: the Internet is turning into a huge online traffic jam.
Between April and September, the network management company Keynote of San
Mateo, California, surveyed the Internet鈥檚 performance by testing how long it
took to download 50 kilobytes from selected Web sites through 34 different
Internet 鈥渂ackbones鈥�, the high-capacity fibre-optic cables that channel
mostInternet traffic.
The Net slowed by 4.5 per cent over this period, Keynote reports. In
September, information was travelling around the Internet at an upper speed of
40 kilobits per second鈥攕ignificantly below the capacity of the fastest
modems on the market.