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April 28, 2008

Welcome to the Exabyte Era, part 2

In a previous post, I wrote about our Cisco IP Traffic Study, entitled “The Exabyte Era.” It’s getting a lot of attention now as its topic is being featured as one of the drivers of the need for new platforms such as our recently launched Cisco ASR 1000 and because the adoption of web 2.0 and “all-things video” is getting increasing relevance to the industry, the market, and our daily Connected Life, whether it be at home, at work or on the move. It is well worth a read and was even was featured on the front page of the New York Times, a few weeks ago.

Here are a few of the takeaways for those who like the Cliffnotes versions:

At Home, the story is video, video, video. Here are some video’s effects as a driver of bandwidth growth.

• Three years from now, Internet video will be six times what it is today, and twenty times what it was in 2006.
• In 2011, online video will generate 1 billion DVDs worth of traffic each month.
• Online video will drive 30% of consumer Internet traffic by 2011.

At Work, new business services and applications will drive the growth:
• By 2010, telepresence will generate more traffic than the entire US Internet backbone in 2000.

On the Move: the coming ubiquity of Mobile Data
• Mobile data traffic in 2011 will be sixteen times what it is today.

The next few years should be quite exciting for the industry, and, because providers are actively investing in their networks to get ahead of the end customer demand for bandwidth and value-added service, the next three years will have quite a beneficial impact to all aspects of our own Connected Lives as well.

Posted by Doug Webster on April 28, 2008 12:51 PM