Research-advisory firm Nemertes Research issued a press release today to hint at a report it had compiled with the shocking title "Internet Interrupted: Why Architectural Limitations Will Fracture the 'Net."

Apparently, internet demand is outstripping growth in the "network capacity at the access layer, and IP addresses are quickly depleting," states Nemertes Research. Nemertes claims that IPv6 is a tad too late and won't change too much, as merely 1% of IT "decision-makers" were deploying IPv6 at the moment, according to the firms own research. Already, 85% of IPv4 addresses were used up and the world will end in 2012. But then that's what IPv6 is there for and deployment frenzy can be first expected when companies think it's time and good business to spend money on it.

Nonetheless, Nemertes sees traffic moving onto paid or private overlay networks and off of the public internet due to congestion. Ted Ritter, a research analyst for Nemertes stated content-providers, such as TV station NBC, had used Limelight Networks to stream this year's Non-Olympics from china. The trend shows towards a flattening and shifting internet. Biggest threat to the 'net are the rising number of internet-enabled devices and machine-machine communications. "In effect, the Internet could fracture back into groups of networks," gibbered Dr. Mike Jude, senior analyst with Nemertes Research.

IT Examiner editor Andrew Thomas recently wrote what he thought about the IPv4 address scare here. X