CHAPTER 4: TECHNOLOGY
4.10.
Overall, there are trends towards an increasing variety of communication methods, an
increasing number of devices7 and an increasing pace of adoption of new
technologies, with young adults leading the way.
Global nature of the internet
4.11.
The trends outlined above have resulted in a vast increase in data volumes. One
exabyte of data is 500 billion pages of text: by 2015, 76 exabytes of data will travel
across the internet every year.8 However, the infrastructure of the internet means data
are not territorially bound.9
4.12.
A network is a group of devices which are linked and so able to communicate with one
another. The internet is often described as a “network of networks”,10 all of which are
interconnected. Communications over the internet take place through the adoption of
protocols which are standardised worldwide. A single communication is divided into
packets (units of data), which are transmitted separately across multiple networks.
They may be routed via different countries as the path of travel followed will be a mix
of the quickest or cheapest paths; not necessarily the shortest path. The quickest path
will depend upon bandwidth capacity and latency (the amount of data which can be
sent through an internet connection and the delay). The result of this method of
transmission is increased data flows across borders. For example, an email sent
between two persons in the UK may be routed via another country if that is the optimum
path for the CSPs involved. The route taken will also depend on the location of servers.
The servers of major email services like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail are based outside
the UK.
4.13.
It is estimated that somewhere between 10% and 25% of the world’s international
telephone and internet traffic transits the UK via underwater fibre optic cables and
much of the remaining traffic transits cabling in the US.11 Whilst the cables are not a
recent technological development, having been in use since the 1970s, the amount of
data that can be carried has steadily risen. Cables carrying data at a rate of 10 gigabits
per second were the norm for most of the 1990s. Data rates of 100 gigabits per second
have been available since 2010. By 2014 Google had already invested $300million in
60 terabit (60,000 gigabit) per second fibre optic cables. In 2014, it was reported that
researchers in the Netherlands and the USA demonstrated data rates of 225 terabits
per second.12
7
8
9
10
11
12
In J. Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and how to stop it, 2008, the author warns that the move away
from “generative technologies” such as personal computers towards “tethered appliances”’ such as
iPhones would extend surveillance capabilities (p. 113). MI5 expressed to me the contrary view.
B. Schneier, Data and Goliath, 2015, chapter 1.
There are some exceptions. See J. Goldsmith and T. Wu, Who controls the Internet? Illusions of a
Borderless World, 2006. Recently some countries have shown a desire for data localisation: 4.42 below.
P. Denning, “The ARPANET after Twenty Years”, American Scientist 77 (Nov-Dec 1989), p. 531.
In L. Harding, The Snowden Files, 2014 the author suggests the figure is 25%: see p. 157. GCHQ
suggested to me that the figure is closer to 10%.
S. Anthony, “225Tbps: World’s fastest network could carry all of internet’s traffic on a single fiber”,
Extreme Tech Website, 27th October 2014.
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