internet - Filters cause capacity shortage
A new trend is emerging at the internet in China, where filters of the censors increasingly cause capacity problems and cause a general slowdown of the traffic. While connectivity is still much better than in the early years of the internet, a deterioration is notable, especially when working on more complicated operation like wiki's or weblogs, or while downloading larger files.An early sign of those capacity problems was revealed when the creative engineers of Tencent in Shenzhen tried to shift the capacity problems of their servers to the PC's of the users of their QQ chatservice. I have been investigating regularly complaints of people that certain sites were blocked, and have found in the past week a new pattern while investigating those complaints. Signals seem to stop at the level of the filters, initially suggesting a block. But then the signals continues again to its destination. By that time the computer of the user might have given up.It is only a theory but a plausible one - otherwise I would not tell you. It does mean that as the volume of data over the internet soars, filters cause a general slowdown. In that way the filters do something they are not supposed to do: they hurt the economy.