IP: Internet growth: Is there a ``Moore's Law'' for data traffic?

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 20:26:58 -0500
>To: Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
>From: David Devereaux-Weber <dave@cable.doit.wisc.edu>
>
>Interesting article from AT&T Research...
>
>The writers used some data from the UW-Madison.
>
>Dave
>
>
>                             Internet growth:
>                 Is there a ``Moore's Law'' for data traffic?
>
>
>
>                      K. G. Coffman and A. M. Odlyzko
>
>                          AT&T Labs - Research
>
>                kgc@research.att.com, amo@research.att.com
>
>
>
>Internet traffic is approximately doubling each year.  This growth
>rate applies not only to the entire Internet, but to a large range of
>individual institutions.  For a few places we have records going back
>several years that exhibit this regular rate of growth.  Even when
>there are no obvious bottlenecks, traffic tends not to grow much
>faster.  This reflects complicated interactions of technology,
>economics, and sociology, similar to those that have produced "Moore's
>Law" in semiconductors.
>
>A doubling of traffic each year represents extremely fast growth, much
>faster than the increases in other communication services.  If it
>continues, data traffic will surpass voice traffic around the year
>2002.  However, this rate of growth is slower than the frequently
>heard claims of a doubling of traffic every three or four months.
>Such spectacular growth rates apparently did prevail over a two-year
>period 1995-6.  Ever since, though, growth appears to have reverted to
>the Internet's historical pattern of a single doubling each year.
>
>Progress in transmission technology appears sufficient to double
>network capacity each year for about the next decade.  However,
>traffic growth faster than a tripling each year could probably not be
>sustained for more than a few years.  Since computing and storage
>capacities will also be growing, as predicted by the versions of
>"Moore's Law" appropriate for those technologies, we can expect demand
>for data transmission to continue increasing.  A doubling in Internet
>traffic each year appears a likely outcome.
>
>If Internet traffic continues to double each year, we will have yet
>another form of "Moore's Law." Such a growth rate would have several
>important implications.  In the intermediate run, there would be
>neither a clear "bandwidth glut" nor a "bandwidth scarcity," but a
>more balanced situation, with supply and demand growing at comparable
>rates.  Also, computer and network architectures would be strongly
>affected, since most data would stay local.  Programs such as Napster
>would play an increasingly important role.  Transmission would likely
>continue to be dominated by file transfers, not by real time streaming
>media.
>
>
>For full paper, see
>
>     <http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/networks.html>
>
>--
>David Devereaux-Weber, P.E.
>djdevere@doit.wisc.edu  http://cable.doit.wisc.edu
>Network Engineering
>Division of Information Technology
>The University of Wisconsin - Madison
>