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