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Internet Traffic Growth Exploding, Study Reveals

by Leila Brillson on June 13, 2009 at 03:47 PM


The Internet is a seemingly endless resource for our watching, listening, and chatting needs. Bandwidth, however, is not. Cisco Systems, the mobile networking company, released a report earlier this week suggesting that global Internet traffic is growing exponentially. Scientific American said that Cisco needed a newer term -- zettabyte, or one trillion gigabytes -- to measure both the amount of uploading and downloading traffic on the Web and the bandwidth required to accommodate it.

The release has a lot of interesting statistics, including the prediction that the Web will nearly quadruple in size over the next four years. Cisco claims that, by 2013, what amounts to 10 billion DVDs will cross the Internet each month. In other words, it will take over a million years to watch just one month's worth of Web video traffic. The findings point to "consumer hyperactivity" -- that with Web-enabled phones and mobile devices, more powerful computers, and multitasking, growth will only increase. For such a surge in volume, networks must be able to accommodate the growth.

Also reporting on the need for speed (and space) is the New York Times, which provides an interesting way for users to track their own network "footprint." With the Cisco-created "PC Pulse," you can clearly determine how much bandwidth you use and for what types of traffic. Not a bad way to become aware of the way we surf.

Take a look at the study here. [From: Cisco Via: Scientific American and New York Times]

Tags: bandwidth, internet, top, traffic

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