Internet Routing - Less Traffic Via US As Net Grows In Other Lands

[GhostShip]

Many smaller countries are building their own web infrastructure as growth once again picks up to meet demand, not suprisingly its not routing via the US.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/08/internet-usa

America is losing its position at the centre of the internet, according to a new study.
The survey by communications analysts TeleGeography Research, based in Washington DC, shows a rapid growth in internet capacity around the rest of the world over the past year - particularly in Latin America and Asia.

As a result, America's traditional role as the internet's traffic policeman is drifting away as other parts of the world become less reliant on it.
"The US used to be a primary hub for many regions," said Eric Schoonover, a senior analyst at TeleGeography. "A lot of data still comes through the US, and a lot of content there is served out to other countries … but its importance is declining, though it has by no means gone away."

The survey - which looks at data taken from internet backbone providers around the world - examined the size and capacity of the physical connections that make up the internet, as well as the traffic that moves across them.
It found that dramatic shifts have led to a decline in America's involvement in overall internet traffic. In 1999, 91% of data from Asia passed through the United States at some point on its journey. By this year that number had fallen to just 54%.

The change was even more pronounced in Africa. Nine years ago the US was involved in 70% of internet traffic coming from the continent, but that number has decreased to just 6% as more can be directed internally, or through Europe and the Middle East.

Decentralisation is the way ahead for a more robust overall internet and whilst its been seen the net can deal with disruptions, due to the reliance on one or two big backbones the reality has been disruption when they fail instead of simple rerouting as envisaged by joe public.

I,m certain the process has been speeded up by the revelation that the NSA was tapping all traffic crossing the US, the traffic flow is likely to decrease further for this reason, after all why would any of the other countries be happy for the US to read their private mail.

[White Stripes]

i cant help but wonder what.. after the majority of the other nations internet traffic moves to their own 'home town'... the excuse of ISPs in the US will be for price gouging ppl for broadband when the backbone itself becomes drasticly 'underused'

[Trestor]

If they want to avoid such spying, they would have to ensure communications don't pass through Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as America. [See 'Echelon' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON ]

[GhostShip]

Echelon is a targeted system used by the western allied intelligence agencies, the newer system put in place to watch the US's borders is a far more powerful tool and will deliver all traffic rather than just traffic originating from A to B on a watch-list, its scope is far more powerful and intrusive.

The real problem for any democracy relying on such systems to stay one leap ahead is that over time such methods become less effective as methods are found to bypass such surveillance and  thus one could argue that to build even bigger systems to provide a small improvement over the old system is actually just another method of social control for the domestic population, the so called "terrorists" are not using electronic methods to communicate.