What Happens When Everyone Becomes A Server?

I recently framed the debate about how much bandwidth we need around what happens when we reach a point where everyone's using high quality video applications all the time.

But there are other ways that demand for bandwidth is trending upwards, like the explosion in technologies that cause broadband users to start acting like servers and therefore demanding a lot more upstream capacity.

The most infamous example of these are peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networking. Instead of computers downloading content (like movies, music, etc.) from servers they link together to form networks whereby computers are downloading content from each other, with each computer sharing its files through its upstream connection to the Internet.

Consumers are embracing new server-like devices such as the Slingbox, which allow you to access your cable TV service at home from anywhere in the world through a broadband connection.

You can even buy consumer-grade home servers for personal use, like backing up files locally and then being able to access those files from anywhere in the world.

And there's lots of new developments coming online furthering this trend, one of the most exciting recent examples being the release of Opera Unite, a new feature in the latest version of the Opera browser that uses the browser to turn your computer into a server.

They've released this with just a few basic apps that enable things like file and photo sharing, a remote media player, and web server for hosting a website. But what's really interesting is that they've created a framework on which anyone can develop new services that take advantage of this new server-in-a-browser paradigm.

While there's no guarantee this particular product will change the world, it helps highlight the growing reality that soon we're going to have computers everywhere in the home that are going to want to act like servers.

Because of this, we need broadband networks that can deliver robust and reliable enough upstream service to be able to handle supplying these growing demands for bandwidth.

And quite frankly, no broadband technology other than fiber has proven itself capable of fully supporting these new demands for upstream capacity. Every other broadband technology has clear capacity and reliability constraints that limit their ability to welcome and nurture the growth of upload-intensive applications.

If we want to have a country where every computer can become a server, where every consumer can become a producer in the digital economy, then we need to set the goal of becoming a Full Fiber Nation otherwise we will never realize the full potential of this class of next-generation Internet applications.