According to Intel’s CTO, Patrick Gelsinger, the Internet is falling, and Intel is ready to pick up the pieces. Speaking at a San Francisco conference, he said that the ten-fold growth in traffic across the 30-year-old structure threatens to sabotage the system. A new system, not surprisingly designed by an Intel-sponsored group, has the backing of Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, and Cambridge University. One report of this story is in today’s Guardian

The new network would have the ability to stop viruses before they reach personal computers. Many of them arrive via spam, which now accounts for 80% of email. Such traffic and consequent problems is only expected to increase in the future, “but we don’t need to replace the internet” according to Jim Page of Email Systems. Vint Cerf, who designed the backbone of the current system, supported Gelsinger’s views, calling the Internet “primitive”.

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