Which Bottleneck?

When you request data, the Web server receives your request and schedules it in priority to other such requests. It doesn't service your request to the exclusion of all others but shares its bandwidth -- which is limited by its own connection to the Internet -- among all users. If the aggregate bandwidth of all simultaneous requests for data exceeds the capacity of the server's own connection, then somebody is going to wait. This will get worse as the number of Internet users, and the amount of bandwidth they have, increases. That's why broadband modems are only part of the total solution; there will always be a bottleneck somewhere. Broadband modems, however, move that bottleneck off the desktop for the first time. -- Tom Halfhill, senior editor