I like the Internet because it has a lot to offer. It’s an avenue for communication, it breaks down geographical boundaries and it’s fast. I came across an article recently by Om Malik called Big Growth for the Internet Ahead, Cisco Says and the graphic caught my eye.
For an Internet enthusiast this is just great and for communicators this should be the eye opener you need to realize how important the Internet really is. Malik’s article showcases the following figures as well:
Anyway, some interesting findings from Cisco include:
- Global IP traffic will reach 44 exabytes per month in 2012, compared to less than seven per month in 2007. In 2002, global IP traffic was five exabytes, which means that the volume of IP traffic in 2012 will be 100 times as large.
- Monthly global IP traffic in December 2012 will be 11 exabytes higher than in December 2011, a single-year increase that will exceed the amount by which traffic has increased in the eight years since 2000.
- Mobile data traffic will roughly double each year from 2008 through 2012. U.S. will surpass Japan in mobile traffic in 2009. (I guess thanks to the iPhone.)
- In 2012, Internet video traffic alone will be 400 times the traffic carried by the U.S. Internet backbone in 2000. Representative of this trend, Internet video has jumped to 22 percent of the global consumer Internet traffic in 2007 from 12 percent in 2006. Video-on-demand, IPTV, peer-to-peer (P2P) video, and Internet video are forecast to account for nearly 90 percent of all consumer IP traffic in 2012.
What does this mean for communicators? Basically, the huge Internet will become gigantic and then colossal. Those who think the Internet isn’t very important better rethink their stance. Traffic will double continuously and file sharing along with Internet video will be by far the majority of data exchanged. Can one afford to not be in the know when they may be responsible for those videos for a company? Probably not. Maybe we should forget about television commercials and start thinking about Internet commercials.
One other thing that caught my eye in the comments of this article was a link from Jose Miguel Cansado about the horsepower I… I mean, we… will have in 2018. A solid state 32 terabyte hard drive, 500 gigabytes of RAM and 256 processor cores at 1.9 teraflops… I’m looking forward to it.
I cannot stand the internet commercials now. Those ads that appear on top of websites, primarily when I got to American television channel websites like NBC have those annoying floating car ads and I quickly scramble to find that pesky X button. BUT you are right and people will make an effort to move towards more of them. I’m not looking forward to that trend.
P.S. Nice blog layout! I’m thinking about changing mine.
Mikey, if you’re talking about bandwidth consumption, check this article…it’ll make you think twice about what you just mentioned…
http://tinyurl.com/4gv8v2
Thanks for the link, Paul. That’s a good article to remind us of physical limitations the Internet is still facing.
One way you can look at the article I was talking about is that, if we put aside what’s physically possible and focus on demand, these traffic predictions are very interesting and an eye opener. Identifying the physical limitations allows us to address the problem. If the infrastructure doesn’t keep up with demand then we will run into problems. The ocean was there before the fiber optics the first time, so if necessary I hope those responsible for those lines will get the funding they need for improvements. You can’t rely on the same cables forever.