Leave it to the network guys to spoil all the fun. But, someone’s got to keep things running down in the engine room while the rest of us are up on deck searching the horizons for new worlds.

Terrible analogy, I know, but it’s a Monday.

Anyway, a new report in Network World warns that the incredible surge of social computing and Enterprise 2.0 activities across enterprises is stretching our networks to the limits.

Images of Scotty come to mind. “She can’t take it anymore, Captain!”

According to Network World, the “MySpace Effect” is putting new strains on already strained networks. The article puts it this way:

“Increasingly popular social-networking sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook are accounting for such huge volumes of DNS queries and bandwidth consumption that carriers, universities and corporations are scrambling to keep pace. The trend is prompting some network operators to upgrade their DNS systems, while others are blocking the sites altogether. Moreover, the “MySpace Effect” is expected to hit many more nets soon, as these network-intensive interactive features migrate from specialty sites to mainstream e-commerce operations and intranets.”

Tom Tovar, president and COO of Nominum, which sells high-end DNS software to carriers and enterprises, says many enterprises are already feeling the pressure:

“One of the things we’re hearing more and more from carriers is that social-networking sites like MySpace and YouTube are contributing to an exponential increase in DNS traffic. A single MySpace page can have anywhere from 200 to 300 DNS lookups, while a normal news site with ads might have 10 to 15 DNS lookups. It’s an exponential increase.”

As the article explains it, “social-networking sites create large volumes of DNS traffic because they pull content from all over the Internet. Most of these sites use content-delivery networks to extend the geographical reach of their content so users can access it closer to home.”

Universities may feel the pinch before everyone else, but some institutions seem to have the problem under control for now. The University of Kansas, for example, already limits how much bandwidth students can consume from dorm rooms. Thus, university servers have been able to handle the load coming from a user population that averages 20,000 per day that frequents sites such as MySpace, FaceBook, and YouTube.

However, as we see more social computing within the enterprise, IT planners will need to prepare their infrastructures with additional bandwidth, additional servers, and, very importantly, additional storage — which has already reached the breaking point thanks to voluminous amounts of data that need to be managed and saved.

The kicker? It all has to be saved and stored somewhere. With the recent spate of mandates and regulations that affect corporate data, the onus is on enterprises to save all transactions and messages that flow through their systems. E-mail and instant messages must be archived, and social computing activities will also fall under this requirement. It’s a good thing disks are so cheap these days.

And remember, Scotty was always keep the warp coil intact with spare parts and know-how.