IP Traffic To 'Double' Every Two Years

Stony Stevenson writes "Web traffic volumes will almost double every two years from 2007 to 2012, driven by video and web 2.0 applications, according to a report from Cisco Systems. Cisco's Visual Networking Index (PDF) predicts that visual networking will account for 90 percent of the traffic coursing through the world's IP networks by 2012. The upward trend is not only driven by consumer demand for YouTube clips and IPTV, according to the report, as business use of video conferencing will grow at 35 percent CAGR over the same period." I left the apostrophes around the word "double" in the title because the linked site has them, but for the life of me I can't figure out why.

Comments

'double'

[Swizec]

How do they even define what a double of IP traffic is? Double the amount of packets? Double the amount of connections? Double the amount of IP's used in traversal from one point to another?

Re:'double'

[kmsigel]

I would assume average bytes per unit time.

Re:'double'

[martyb]

Said the parent post:

How do they even define what a double of IP traffic is?

They predicted the amount of traffic in petabytes per month.

Said the original post:

I left the apostrophes around the word 'double' in the title because the linked site has them, but for the life of me I can't figure out why.

TFA contains a link to Cisco's Visual Networking Index (PDF)

Look on page 3 of that PDF, where there is "Table 1. Global IP Traffic 2006-2012".

A quick scan of the values do show a doubling of volume looking 2 years out from any given year... but there are exceptions to that. The comparison of traffic from 2010 to 2012 mostly does not show a doubling, AND, in a couple places, the data comparing 2009 to 2011 does not double, either.

Lastly, the final row of that table predicts "Total IP traffic (PB per month)":

• 2006: 4,234
• 2007: 6,577
• 2008: 10,747
• 2009: 16,296
• 2010: 24,228
• 2011: 32,983
• 2012: 43,518

Twice the volume of 2010, i.e. 24,228 would be 48,456 which is less than 43,518. So, though not quite doubled in one case listed there, to say that it would double every two years would be incorrect. And we'd be all over that if they had claimed it to be. IMHO, to say 'double' is a reasonable way to express this concept.

Re:'double'

[rd1101]

Everyone knows that the standard measure of IP traffic is pps. pr0n packets per second.

Re:'double'

[gEvil (beta)]

Double the amount of intellectual property involved.

Re:'double'

[postbigbang]

Although I'll not argue the data, it seems a bit self-serving to make a prediction like this. There are argument offsets to this data that might be salient:

1) video, especially HDTV, is being delivered by cable systems out-of-band of the Internet because of its high data rate. This trend will continue, else cable companies will have to evolve (and rapidly) immensely fast infrastructure that must also match CPE. Unlikely to occur. However, DSL providers are faced with a similar problem. What this means is that HDTV will be switched at the head-end eventually, and not 100% available to CPE. Video on Demand will become the rule of the day, thus offsetting some of the perceived growth in Cisco's numbers

2) business video conferencing, even in the face of $4 or $8/gal costs, just hasn't taken off. Codecs are available that can do a very good job of offsetting bandwidth needs.

3) isochronous media is still a bear, but it simply needs priority and priority in the face of network neutrality calls will be difficult without increasing bandwidth and therefore asset costs, which pays/plays into Cisco's hands mightily (are you watching, Wall Street?).

4) Cellular/mobile growth will climb, but it's more linear in growth and devices that receive entertainment content that uses bandwidth are largely distributed on private, rather than the public Interent. You just can't make a mobile phone in to an HDTV no matter how much you try, and the demand for it isn't there despite the best hopes of the telcos.

5) regionalization of content distribution is already occuring, and so a distributed infrastructure will 'cellularize' a lot of transfers. Transasction-focused systems aren't well managed through regionalization, but because entertainment systems aren't usually transaction-based, the use case is largely moot.

Doubling is therefore a projection based on a lot of assumptions, mostly favoring the maker of the study.

Re:'double'

[Kingrames]

"would be 48,456 which is less than 43,518. "

want to help me with my math homework?

Re:'double'

[IGnatius T Foobar]

They predicted the amount of traffic in petabytes per month.

I'm confused. Could you express that in the more commonly accepted unit of measurement: Libraries of Congress? Thanks...

Re:'double'

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like that PDF link was supposed to be in the summary too since there's a random (PDF).

Re:'double'

[Hatta]

How do you measure total bits transferred across a network though? If you just sit at a router on the backbone, you only get what goes through that router. You'd totally miss traffic that occurs within a providers network for instance.

Re:'double'

[Bandman]

The worst part of that analogy is that the LoC is constantly growing.

For long term proposals, you'd need to do inflation-adjusted Libraries of Congress.

Re:'double'

[.tom.]

Twice the volume of 2010, i.e. 24,228 would be 48,456 which is less than 43,518. So, though not quite doubled in one case listed there, to say that it would double every two years would be incorrect. And we'd be all over that if they had claimed it to be. IMHO, to say 'double' is a reasonable way to express this concept.

Well, using terms such as "approximately" or "roughly" is certainly more applicable than quotes, which are akward when used to indicated uncertainty in a quantity.

Re:'double'

[poopdeville]

Twice the volume of 2010, i.e. 24,228 would be 48,456 which is less than 43,518. So, though not quite doubled in one case listed there, to say that it would double every two years would be incorrect. And we'd be all over that if they had claimed it to be. IMHO, to say 'double' is a reasonable way to express this concept.

Twice the volume of 2010 is 4020...

Re:'double'

[Anonymous Coward]

These numbers track pretty well with the growth seen at a major US ISP's mail server traffic over the last five years. We went from 100MBit sustained to 1GBit sustained in a little over three years, and that's with an anti-spam solution that directly turned away 70% of remote connection requests. I can't imagine what it would have been like had we allowed those connections.

Re:'double'

[murraj2]

Double ain't what it used to be, that's why I've moved on to BigDecimal.

Re:'double'

[bockelboy]

Ha, that's waaay too low. Here's the international traffic for one project I work on, CMS:

http://t2.unl.edu/phedex/xml/quantity_cumulative?link=dest&span=86400&starttime=time.time()-30*86400

Total is 3.7PB over the last month. I doubt that one science experiment accounts for 40% of global IP traffic in Cisco's estimates.

Re:'double'

[MrNaz]

Cisco: IP traffic volumes are measured in "dollars spent on Cisco gear".

So, to paraphrase the article title: Amount of money spent on Cisco products to 'Double' every two years.

Re:'double'

[makapuf]

Double Cisco(tm) router purchases per year.

Re:'double'

[theeddie55]

Ha, that's waaay too low. Here's the international traffic for one project I work on, CMS: http://t2.unl.edu/phedex/xml/quantity_cumulative?link=dest&span=86400&starttime=time.time()-30*86400 Total is 3.7PB over the last month. I doubt that one science experiment accounts for 40% of global IP traffic in Cisco's estimates. 3.7 isn't quite 40% of 10,747

Re:'double'

[ShieldW0lf]

Assuming that there is a looming bandwidth shortage; It seems to me that a very large portion of internet traffic is being generated to route around the law. So, if you want lots of free bandwidth that you don't need to pay for, it looks like it would be pretty cheap to fix the laws.

Re:'double'

[nurb432]

2) business video conferencing, even in the face of $4 or $8/gal costs, just hasn't taken off. Codecs are available that can do a very good job of offsetting bandwidth needs. Its slowly gaining in use. Just like 'work at home' or 'alternative work schedules'. Its just taking time for business to get in the swing of the new way of thinking, but it is happening, slowly.

Duh

[kmsigel]

I really thought traffic would level off, and maybe even drop over the next several years. The Internet is a fad. I would never tell it that, but it won't last.

Re:Duh

[elrous0]

I'm still holding onto my AOL stock. Dial-up private networks are coming back! YOU'LL SEE!

I'll show all you doubters, and then Janine will take me back.

Re:Duh

[LWATCDR]

I know you are being funny but the truth is that it will level off at some time. It will not take to many years of doubling before the amount reaches good enough. Most voice is moving to using IP as a transport, video is rapidly moving that way. Data has now moved almost exclusively to TCP/IP "anyone else remember IPX?".

I about ten years ago I told some friends that in the near future we will no longer have a phone line and cable TV but instead a data port. Eventually we will have enough band width.

Re:Duh

[UnknowingFool]

You forgot the part where you tell us to get off your lawn. *shakes fist*

Re:Duh

[KGIII]

Why would the Internet do that? The internet is a warm, welcoming, fuzzy place. *nods*

Re:Duh

[Hoi Polloi]

Well, you see the internet tubes start to leak after a while so traffic should start to level off due to that.

Re:Duh

[mgblst]

Well, technology is cyclical, after all. I have a box full of pagers just waiting for the right time to peak...again.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

It will not take to many years of doubling before the amount reaches good enough.

Yeah because a real-time 3D virtual world interface run over our data pipes won't ever emerge or become standard; Or virtual machines usable from any terminal that move location in the grid; Or any other of a hundred things my little lizard brain can't conceive of yet.

How can people continuously make the statement that at point x we'll have enough that we'll stop expanding our data/memory/network capacity? How many times do we have to make that mistake before we realize the assertion is silly.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times will I have to see people assert their belief that exponential growth is infinitely sustainable?
Only to then witness someone else complaining about "peak" whatever.
The Earth is finite, and bringing a substantial amount of new matter into it would have devastating consequences for our climate and plate tectonics etc... even so, the solar system is finite, the galaxy is finite, and although the universe may be spatially "infinite" it does contain a finite amount of matter, and has a finite useful lifespan.
Ever heard this little story about a chess board and some grains of wheat? ;)
Hasn't a whole century of "year 2000" predictions sufficed?
Futurists are always wrong, unless they're lucky, or insufficiently futuristic.
We had "virtual worlds" in 1996. No idea what you mean about VMs, but jesus, phones can run VNC nowadays, you know? :)

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

offtopic:

Am I imagining this or was it true:

You could get onto gopher and usenet and maybe some other pre-web internet services back in the late 80s on Prodigy.

Re:Duh

[LWATCDR]

That all depends on what you think "to many years" of doubling" means. I was thinking maybe 20 or so.
If you doubled the amount of IP traffic every year for 32 years you would end up with over four billion times the traffice we have now. At 33 years it would be around eight billion....
Yes every technology reaches a state of maturity in at least area of performance.
Ships today are not significantly faster than ships from the 1950s. There are just more of them that can approach the top speeds of the best of the 1950s ships.
Aircraft are not significantly faster than they where in the late 1960s.
At some point the growth in IP traffic will slow to a lot less than doubling every year.

Re:Duh

[lawaetf1]

Remember when Worldcom went poo-poo and someone was like "wow, they route 45% of the internet traffic or whatever" and then someone else was like "man, I wish I was the guy who had the prompt 'Do you want to turn off the Internet? yes/no' because I'd totally click yes."

Intellectual Property to double? Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, in Slashdot World, IP means both things and are used interchangably from headline to headline

Re:Intellectual Property to double? Cool!

[dmbasso]

You could never learn Japanese.

Re:Intellectual Property to double? Cool!

[athdemo]

I love when somebody mods someone down because they don't get the joke.

Self serving?

[stokessd]

Hmmm, a huge supplier of networking gear is saying that network will continue to grow...This article is making me want to buy a lot of networking gear to get ahead of the impending doubling. I wonder if that's the intent? Nah, couldn't be.

Sheldon

Re:Self serving?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hmmm, a huge supplier of networking gear is saying that network will continue to grow.."

I can definitely believe it, over the past year my ISP has been implementing very restrictive banwidth caps.

Re:Self serving?

[Bandman]

But extending that to it's logical conclusion, wouldn't that trend make it less likely for the article to be correct? I mean, if everyone's ISP implements bandwidth caps....

Re:Self serving?

[mgblst]

So you are saying that they are lying, and that it won't double?

Or that it will double, but they should not be the ones to tell us this?

It is not like they are picking the number out of the air, they have some good basis for this guess. Just because they benefit from it, doesn't make it less true, more worthy of some independent fact-cbecking, yes, but not less true.

Re:Self serving?

[morgan_greywolf]

Yeah, it reminds of those commercials down here in Florida where the purveyors of hurricane-proofing products tell you that the hurricane season is predicted to be more active than normal. Those guys are always full of ....

HEY! The winds really picked up outside! What's with all the wate....*&(*&()&*)&))&)&

(*&E
NO CARRIER

Re:Self serving?

[Hyppy]

Oh, believe me, nobody is ever going to (correctly) assume that Gartner is unbiased.

Re:Self serving?

[Hyppy]

It makes the predictions near useless for anyone until independently fact-checked.

So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[o1d5ch001]

No news here... yes, Internet traffic doubles over a relatively short period of time..

The biggest challenge going forward is how we are possibly going to power all of this traffic. Electrical power costs are going to be raising 10-20% a year for the next little while. What we need to engineer is using the bandwidth more efficiently.

I never thought I would say this, but Television still beats the Internet for delivering video content. As for video conferencing, it is cheaper to video conference than to fly, but again, the telephone conference call over POTS still delivers ALOT of bandwidth very efficiently. Not that I am a fan of the Telcos, I am a fan of the POTS, its a very mature infrastructure that delivers very high value.

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[umghhh]

This is probably true - the quality of my average VoIP connection is rather bad as long as it goes through common internet. OTOH if I make calls over so called POTS this goes over IP too but as the network is dedicated for this purpose only is also better maintained and not abused by evil /.ers downloading pr0n.
Having said that I must admit that this all does not matter if the mass (including customers as well as agents of evil in boards of directors of major companies in the industry) will decide that from three solutions XYZ the best is B then it is so and so it will be.

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Television still beats the Internet for delivering video content

You've got to be friggin' kidding me. Analog TV is wasting huge amounts of bandwidth - you could do the same thing way better by multicasting those shows over IP (since this is a specific application, you could probably pick a better protocol than IP). There are far better digital compressiong & encoding technologies (i.e. h264) than what is currently done for TV.

The problem is that people are starting to get used to time-shifting and watching shows when they want, so that's where the increase in bandwidth comes from. Besides - how many TV's are on at any one time - you could easily stream individual shows as people request them rather then transmitting all shows at once to everyone.

the telephone conference call over POTS still delivers ALOT of bandwidth very efficiently. Not that I am a fan of the Telcos, I am a fan of the POTS, its a very mature infrastructure that delivers very high value.

The only value that POTS supplies is that it's maturity simply means that it's been around for so long that it's the only standard when it comes to voice calling. In terms of bandwidth, it's wasteful (in terms of reliability and whatnot it's better, but I don't believe that's a result of the technology - rather it's the business requirements in order to stay competitive, especially with newer technologies and businesses).

Somewhat ironically, captcha is dialup.

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[KGIII]

Yeah. I tend to believe that this report is accurate. Like all reports it is out there for a reason (profit) and this is no surprise either. I do have to wonder, do you think that there will come a time when it isn't doubling any longer? I too am a fan of POTS and the reliability of POTS which lead lead to the above question. At some point, in the past, the rate of telephones in residential areas or businesses was doubling quickly. The rise in cell phone use is something more recent but goes along the same idea. I don't know but in my observations (very layman and very limited) everyone I know already has a cell phone that is likely to get one just as everyone that wants a telephone has one. So those doubled and doubled and doubled until the world was full of 'em. I have to wonder if there will come a time when the growth will slow to a much smaller ratio. It seems obvious that it would but then again I don't think there's a limit to how much people will use the tubes for.

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[o1d5ch001]

You've got to be friggin' kidding me. Analog TV is wasting huge amounts of bandwidth

I didn't say a more efficient use of bandwidth, I said more efficient at delivering video, full stop. You can't compare what you _could_ do with what people _are_ doing. Let me give you some comparisons of existing technology.

1: Bit torrent delivery of television quality 2h movie: Time 4-8 hours on average. 650-900 MB of DISK SPACE and bandwidth. Multiply this by the 400 people who download this, it is allot of time for allot of bandwidth.

2. Youtube.com 2h tv quality video: You can't do it, its not available. Even if you could, it would still take hours to download, and then you could watch it on your puny laptop screen. Don't even get me started on hooking up most PCs to the TV (Macs shine at this, BTW).

3. Aerial broadcast of 2h movie. Time: 2h. Bandwidth used: SHARED usage for 400-100,000 people. Damn efficient use of bandwidth and resources. Even if its not on-demand.

4. Satellite broadcast: 500 channels from one satellite. SHARED usage for 1,000,000 - 24,000,000 million people. Damn efficient use of available bandwidth and resources.

As far as I know, there is no-one with a large user base using the Internet for TV quality video. Never mind HD video quality that I get from my satellite today! This does not take into account the HUGE power requirements of data centers, routers, and the rest of the Internet Infrastructure. Broadcast TV and Satellite TV are great uses of bandwidth AND resources compared to other technologies.

People have been promising multicast TV over IP for a long long time. I remember early 90s efforts that just failed because the REAL bandwidth and computing resources were just too high.

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

1: Bit torrent delivery of television quality 2h movie: Time 4-8 hours on average. 650-900 MB of DISK SPACE and bandwidth.

It usually takes me about 30-45 minutes to finish downloading a torrent of that size, assuming it has a decent number of seeds. With a really popular torrent, I can get the 350MB TV episodes in as little as 8 minutes.

Broadcast TV still has an advantage over the Internet for video delivery, but that advantage is shrinking all the time.

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[iampiti]

Yes, but this only works if a significant number of people are willing to watch the same programme at the same time.

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[smallfries]

Although my connection isn't as good as the AC who replied I download 900mb files in less than two hours. In fact 4 episodes of Lost downloaded in about 2 hours the other day so assuming that Bit-torrent can't download in real time is flawed.

If you are going to multiply the time by the people in the swarm then you have to remember two things: it gets faster with more people and when you compare to broadcast you have to make a fair comparison of the bandwidth involved. The people in the swarm are making point-to-point connections across a shared medium. The broadcast case uses the whole of the medium.

For the second reason it would make sense to replace broadcast tv with multi-cast over a shared network. To correct your assumption that nobody is doing this yet you should look up the BBC iPlayer. It's caused quite a stir amongst uk isps specifically because they are doing this on a large (national) scale.

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[SirCowMan]

Commmeeeoonnn IPV6! Why are the media rogues benefitting most from multicasting? :P

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I don't see a problem with hooking up modern PCs to TVs, especially with the newer line of displays (VGA/DVI/HDMI/component/S-vid/more inputs than you can shake your remote at). You don't need a MAC to do this easily, though I will concede that it is tricky to hook up older vid cards to SDTVs (overscan/underscan and all that jazz).
As far as essentially multicasting by satellite, how about next gen multicasting capable optical network architectures like Light Trails?

Re:So buy buy buy more Cisco Router!!!

[umghhh]

so this comes down to the same thing - it works fast and umghh efficient when many people watch(ed) the same).

Still there are places (here in Germany for instance) where ISPs exist that hooked up with tv broadcasters and deliver stuff from these broadcasters' libraries for free or for a small fee. I have not tried so I do not know how good this service is though.

Take advantage of IP Multicasting

[Twide]

To combat the increase of traffic why cant businesses/ISP's work more towards multicasting? for at least some part of the webs streaming sources (internet radio.. etc) this would alleviate some of the load surely..

Re:Take advantage of IP Multicasting

[Thundersnatch]

To combat the increase of traffic why cant businesses/ISP's work more towards multicasting

Because there is no viable billing model for multicast IP traffic as of yet. How do you charge for traffic created/amplified by routers? ISP A has to trust that ISP B isn't lying about the amount of traffic actually delivered to end users, becuase ISP A has no visibility once a multicast packet leaves their network and enters that of ISP B.

Re:Take advantage of IP Multicasting

[thegameiam]

Multicast is great if you have several receivers who want to receive the exact same source, but is quite limited in other contexts. Also, there are a bunch of screwball phomena which occur when translating IP multicast into link-layer multicasts (like, Cisco switches don't forward multicast between each other unless you disable igmp snooping, which turns it all into broadcast, and takes away any possible benefit from it being multicast...)

Re:Take advantage of IP Multicasting

[AbRASiON]

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I don't know much about this stuff, so I likely am) but isn't multi-casting an ipv6 thing?
If so, I'd wait another 5 or 10 years, because ipv6 adoption (like many things humans do) is going to be slow until it's urgent.

Re:Take advantage of IP Multicasting

[Twide]

Multicasting has been around for a long time, however need and adoption of the tech didn't catch on (look at how the 'M-bone' died simply because it was "opt in") Ipv6 multicasting will hopefully adopted more swiftly and become more successful than its predecessor.

No Link to PDF

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the link to the PDF you newb. Now I have to click the article to get the PDF. Tool

Re:No Link to PDF

[the_fat_kid]

name caller

In summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Network equipment vendor says "Buy more of our kit!"

Dark Fiber

[argent]

Network Scientists have discovered that the majority of the bandwidth in the Internet is "dark fiber", a mysterious substance that has the same gravitational effects on backhoes as normal fiber, but does not interact with the internet as a whole. Some believe is possible to harness this bandwidth through dark packets, but others fear the growth of pink packets (typically containing porn and spam) will eliminate any potential gains from this little-understood phenomenon. Other scientists, primarily at ISPs, believe that extracting dark money from end users through traffic surcharges is the only way to take advantage of dark fiber.

Re:Dark Fiber

[kjots]

You fool! Don't you realize that when normal and dark packets interact, there is a non-zero probability that they will merge to form a 'strange' packet! When a strange packet comes into contact with another other kind of packet, it too is converted into a strange packet! Even a simpleton can see that eventually, the entire Internet will consist exclusively of strange packets!

When will these selfish and arrogant network engineers stop putting all of our Internet existences at risc just to satisfy their own curiosity?

Re:Dark Fiber

[argent]

Even a simpleton can see that eventually, the entire Internet will consist exclusively of strange packets!

But, Doctor Evil, that already happened!"

paging Albert Bartlett

[Gothmolly]

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

Demand doubling...What about the supply?

[elguillelmo]

Will network infrastructure meet this doubling demand? Or is net traffic going to get stuck due to a series-of-tubes shortage?

Re:Demand doubling...What about the supply?

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I think you got it wrong. I'm no snob but maybe some of the general populace should have their "tubes" tied ;)

the apostrophes around the word 'double'

[wiredog]

Air quotes. Someone doesn't believe the hype...

Is there a correlation??

[iXiXi]

I would like to see the increase in packets over tiume correlated to the increase in pr0n sites on a graph.

"Everyone's going to buy lots more routers..."

[Angostura]

.... router company tells shareholders.

fixed a typo

[andreyvul]

s/video and web 2.0/bittorrent/g

Quotes...

[Scratch-O-Matic]

In this context, they're a misguided form of emphasis. Thank god the original article didn't have an apostrophe.

Re:Quotes...

[hbr]

Or is it because it will only "nearly double", rather than double outright?

Or is it because they are quoting just the "double" part of Cisco's report?

Seems like unwarranted accuracy to me for predicting events 2 years hence. Also seems like an underestimate too.

IP Television - a prankster's dream

[davidwr]

How soon before some technically savvy prankster switches television stations around or fiddles with the V-chip codes?

Can you imagine hearing

"Mommy, why did Sesame Street turn off?"

just because someone flipped the bit and make it TV-M?

Or worse, some blackmailer replaces the Superbowl with infomercials for the last two minutes.

Time range

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Web traffic volumes will almost double every two years from 2007 to 2012

But ONLY until Dec 31, 2011 when it will immediately stop doubling.

Re:Time range

[Jouster]

Its behavior past that point is dependent on the cosmological constant.

--J

Re:Time range

[Hyppy]

But ONLY until Dec 31, 2011 when it will immediately stop doubling. The packet singularity.

Re:Time range

[felipekk]

Everyone knows the world will end in 2012...

Re:Time range

[Skazz11]

At that time the tubes will be clogged and a major cleaning procedure will be necessary - everybody knows that...

Jeez...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for that whole 'Virtual Reality' thing to take off.
I hear it's the wave of the future!

Re:Jeez...

[Bandman]

I'll believe it when I get my flying car...

What's the average in centibytes per fortnight?

[davidwr]

There, got that out of the way.

Re:What's the average in centibytes per fortnight?

[kmsigel]

How many 0.08 bits every 14 days. I like it.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news today. Climate change is gripping America, we are likely to see longer and hotter summers - says a spokesman from the American association of icecream manufacturers.

Need the 'info'

[jimbudncl]

Perhaps this 'doubling' effect is a result of 'downloading' caused by intra-psychic influences beamed into our heads with a certain... shall I say... 'laser'.

A graph?

[davidwr]

And what shape would that graph have? Would it be a double-bell-curve shape or a compressed single-bell-curve shape?

Re:A graph?

[iXiXi]

I need different perspectives, so both please.

And in more news, apples fall to the ground

[pieterh]

This is just the generalization of Moore's Law, caused by the standardized technology curve where costs fall to zero.

I call this the "half-life rule" of technology, where the half-life is usually about 18 months: the cost of any technology will halve every 18 months. What remains in the end is raw materials, shipping, marketing.

Since the cost of the Internet is falling constantly, its per-dollar capacity is doubling every 18 months.

A corollary: Wikipedia's budget is 60% spent on hardware, and this sum is constant over the years, yet Wikipedia's content doubles every... 18 months or so. Moore's Law working in both directions, so we have more or less infinite expansion at a constant cost.

Obviously the expansion is not infinite, because costs do not actually fall to zero and at a certain stage marketing, shipping, and usage costs outweigh production and account for 99.999% of the final cost.

But still, this is hardly news unless people are shocked to learn that technology gets cheaper over time.

While I'm ranting about people being surprised at the obvious, note that we can predict the cost of technology in the future, quite accurately, by applying the half-life rule to the production costs any given product, subtracting the fixed costs.

So for example I can predict that cell phones will be disposable (costing under $10) within four years.

Re:And in more news, apples fall to the ground

[Constantine XVI]

So for example I can predict that cell phones will be disposable (costing under $10) within four years. Check your calendar: http://gizmodo.com/393154/hop+on-1800-10-gsm-cell-phone-is-a-phone-you-wont-mind-losing

Re:And in more news, apples fall to the ground

[pieterh]

Two things:

1. the Hop-On 1800 lowers costs by removing basic functionality such as a display. I'm assuming the costs will fall for an equivalent product, i.e. what would be a basic cheap cell phone today.
2. You cannot actually buy the Hop-On 1800 anywhere, this is still vapourware. Will it be available for $10 any time soon? Remember the EEE PC, promised at $200 and currently at about $350-$600.

Re:And in more news, apples fall to the ground

[dwye]

> So for example I can predict that cell phones will
> be disposable (costing under $10) within four years.

For a particular subset of cell phone (those over 3 years old) that has been the case for years. Hence the iPhone, a computer with a teeny display and attached cell phone, to try to avoid this fate.

Re:And in more news, apples fall to the ground

[o1d5ch001]

I know this is meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek, the cost of the Internet is _not_ falling. It may have been true, but the steeply rising costs of data centers and Internet technologies in general due to rising electrical costs and future shortages will start to be felt and the "cost of the Internet" will rise dramatically when measured in gross dollars spent.

Quotes

[Jouster]

Well, because "otherwise", you wouldn't know when to "mark" the "sarcastic" parts, perhaps with "air quotes".

c.f. "Lay-zer".

Related baffled query: When did "lead" become an acceptable substitute for "led"? As in, "She led me down the path of insanity, and I merrily followed."

--J

Re:Quotes

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the apostrophes from TFA are an example of good standard journalistic practice. A news publication should never make a claim in a headline without some indication (the quotes) that it came from a source outside that publication. In this case, a report from Cisco. This is just one of many small textual differences between pubs with good journalistic integrity and those with not so much.

Re:Quotes

[Standfast]

Thank you, AC, for the correct answer!

Despite what others have written, it's not sarcasm, and it's certainly not because the headline writer doubted the correctness or consistency of the source being cited.

What you see are simple quotation marks, used to indicate the exact word or phrase from the news source is being repeated in its citation.

I'm a bit concerned to find that so few /. readers appear to understand quotation marks when used in this way.

  -David.

Re:"Everyone's going to buy lots more routers..."

[Bandman]

News at 11...

Eyebrow raised

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that.

  - The Internet.

Moore's Law works for technology.

[hhw]

With 10Gb circuits increasing in popularity and replacing OC48's, we're probably still in good shape, until 2012. Perhaps, by then the Cisco CRS-1 won't seem so overpriced. In the meantime, everyone can buy Juniper :)

betterstartupgrading

[the_one(2)]

please tag this with betterstartupgrading =)

as opposed to Non-IP traffic....

[bi0hazard]

which is expected to stay the same....

Non-IP traffic had this to say on the subject:

"Why does that IP traffic have to be taking up all the bandwdidth all the time.. like it's sooooo important..."

IP traffic could not be reached for comment at this time...

Doing the math

[Oxy the moron]

I don't think this is quite right... it's usually about three years between Firefox releases, not two.

Oh no!

[billnapier]

IP traffic is going to double? I better go out and buy me some more Cisco routers to handle the problem!

Re:Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem is that if traffic keeps doubling there will be a porn shortage! We must allow drilling for more porn offshore and in Alaska.

I have the 'solution'...

[rickb928]

...if this is a 'problem'.

You all need to stop using stupid stuff.

There, fixed THAT for ya.

Video conferencing schmideo conferencing

[bevoblake]

35% growth in video conferencing annually? Maybe, but the technology still has leaps and bounds to go. After attending a recent all-day meeting via video conferencing, I realized that:
1. You still can't make out expressions that well.
2. The software that is supposed to auto-focus the camera on people doesn't work very well at all, focusing on quiet side bar conversations all too often.
3. People were staring at their computers and blackberrys the entire time because very few people were actually in the same room.

Maybe we'll have 35% growth given the high price of travel these days, but the technology needs some help.

It's not fair, I demand throttling

[Xelios]

as business use of video conferencing will grow at 35 per cent CAGR over the same period.

I take it this'll account for a major percentage of bandwidth being used up, I don't think that's fair to us little guys who only use our internet for VOIP, not fancy video conferencing. There are far more residential customers than there are businesses. Why should my internet by affected by these guys wanting video communication? Especially when the poor ISP's networks aren't built to handle it. It's not fair. They should be throttled.

What? That only applies to P2P?

Hot Grits!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia fist gets shaken at you!

for the life of me

[Speare]

I left the apostrophes around the word 'double' in the title because the linked site has them, but for the life of me I can't figure out why.

This is a very common headlining technique in non-USA journalism. The Australian news service is not drawing the conclusion that traffic will double. The news service is quoting a report from Cisco. As such, the headline can be ready as "IP Traffic Said to Double Every Two Years." The use of quotes instead of the omitted words is a space-saving technique, much like using a comma instead of the word and in "CmdrTaco Confused, Disoriented by Quotes."

This isn't flamebait, but perhaps it is a flame. For the life of me, I can't see how an editor of a news-aggregating service can serve in that capacity for a decade and not pick up on these kinds of things. Even if you wish to disavow being a journalist or an editor, you might perhaps learn a thing or two from them.

Re:for the life of me

[argent]

I can't see how an editor of a news-aggregating service

First parsed as "news-aggravating service". Seems about right.

In the US, it is far more common to see people use quote's, in an attempt to 'incorrectly' emphasize words. Its 'nearly' as common, as people who think two comma's, are better than one, or who think apostrophe's can just be shoved in, 'anywhere'.

Double every 2 years

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure it will
I'm sure it will

Butters' Law of Photonics

[donkawechico]

...says that the amount of data coming out of an optical fiber is doubling every nine months. So every time traffic doubles, capacity pentuples.

Granted, there's still the last-mile problem, deploying the technology, etc. But I wouldn't predict the collapse of the internet any time soon.

Umm...

[sexconker]

"OMG TRAFFIC WILL DOUBLE EVERY TWO YEARS!"
-Cisco

They're SO not trying to cause a stir and get people in the mindset of upgrading network infrastructure at least every two years. ...

Re:Umm...

[mabinogi]

no, they're not, because it wouldn't work.

What they're actually doing is telling their investors that they're in a good shape for the next few years.

Clash of the Titans

[Mybrid]

Seems Cisco didn't get this memo:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/going-medieval-time-warner-begins-metered-bandwidth-testing/#comments/

AT&T and Comcast have both indicated that they will soon start metering bandwidth as well.

Who's going to win? Cisco or Time Warner? Bandwidth won't be doubling if the ISP providers start limiting users to 40GB/month and charging $1/GB overage. All the companies like Youtube and Netflix providing streaming video will see traffic drop to Nil if Mom & Dad have to pay $1GB in overage.

It's youtube's fault alright

[Spy der Mann]

How many times does the average user rewatch a favorite clip in youtube instead of F***ING DOWNLOADING IT TO HIS COMPUTER? Can anyone explain to me why in their minds they don't let users save their favorite clips to their harddrives? They ALREADY DOWNLOAD THEM everytime they play!

Re:It's youtube's fault alright

[Collective 0-0009]

Advertising. You go to youtube, and you see their ads. Plus the get the hits to show off to everyone and jack up advertising prices. If they allow downloads, you don't hit the site, you don't see the ads, and youtube loses money. They might be able to tack on ads to the downloaded movies (ie, bottom bar, like the score in sporting stuff), but I would guess there are legal and techinical hurdles.

But you are right, just download TFV and be done with it. Youtube and on demand video (over the internet) were a great idea 10 years ago... but now that most users have at least a 250GB hdd, you should just be downloading and saving.

Re:It's youtube's fault alright

[mabinogi]

10 years ago I was using a 56K modem.
On demand video was not only not a good idea, it wasn't even possible. (at least not in anything remotely resembling watchable quality)

I didn't get the memo

[azzuth]

did they expidite the end of the world. i thought it was scheduled for Dec 21. 2012. Man, i hate it when they shorten my deadlines (ba dum chi)

The cake is a lie!

[Larryish]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Formally referred to as...

[RoboRay]

Gore's Law

No, it will start to drop

[nurb432]

As people start getting hit with bills due to the soon to come 'pay per use' internet plans.

sooo...

[bmecoli]

are they going to call this Gore's law? ;p

Here we go again!!

[Shotgun]

It wasn't that long ago that a "Large Corporation" with an interest in seeing the Internet grow was stating that Internet traffic was doubling every year. Providers ran out and bought up all the gear they could get their hands on. Hardware suppliers ramped up to meet demand. Fiber was pumped into the ground by the truckload.

But traffic was only increasing by 50%/year. The equipment sat idle. Shops closed up and dumped the hardware they bought with VC money on the market at firesale prices. Hardware vendors could not sell anything in the glutted market. Worst of all, I got laid off.

I wouldn't believe Cisco any further than I could throw them.

A little more analysis...

[JammingEcono]

Thanks to the group for the discussion on this paper. The folks at NextGenWeb have discussed the report on their blog too: http://tinyurl.com/3w4qlm (full disclosure: I help NextGenWeb with their blogging)