Internet traffic growth trends
Andrew Odlyzko
Digital Technology Center
University of Minnesota
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko
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Main points:
• Internet traffic growth slowing
• Hype accelerating
• Even very biased hype is occasionally correct:
trustworthy data collection desirable
• There are huge sources of potential future traffic
• Future traffic levels result of interaction of complex
feedback loops
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Internet Growth Hype:
“… bandwidth … will be chronically scarce. Capacity actually creates
demand in this business…bandwidth-centric names are good values at
any price since nobody can predict the true demand caused by growth.”
-- Jack Grubman, April 1988
“Over the past five years, Internet usage has doubled every three
months.”
-- Kevin Boyne, UUNET COO, Sept. 2000
“If you are not scared, you do not understand”
-- Mike O’Dell, UUNET Chief Scientist, May 2000
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Blatant implausibilities in Internet bubble stories
Mike O’Dell, May 2000
http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/optic/main.html
Audio presentation: claimed consistent 10x annual growth
Slides: domestic UUNET network: growth only 7x
mid – 1997
mid – 1998
mid – 1999
5,281 OC12-miles
38,485
268,794
Extrapolating back to mid-1994 using 10x annual rate:
5 OC12-miles  2,000 T1-miles ??????
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Demand estimates difficult:
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Yogi Berra
• Underestimates of demand for high-tech products common
 computers
 mobile phones
…
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http://www.dtc.umn.edu/mints
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ESnet: longest available run of reliable traffic statistics:
Traffic accepted by ESnet in June of each year
year
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
TB
0.079
0.187
0.437
0.628
1.72
2.82
2.81
4.61
8.83
18.8
35.7
43
103
166
282
470
1210
2670
1990 to 2007 compound annual growth rate: 85%
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Hong Kong: intriguing slowdown
year
growth rate in Internet
traffic over the previous
year, for October of each year
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
182%
377
172
68
29
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Per-capita traffic intensity in Hong Kong is about 6x the U.S. level.
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Huge potential sources of additional Internet traffic:
• Storage
 Year-end 2006 worldwide digital storage capacity: 185,000 PB
 Year-end 2006 worldwide Internet traffic: about 2,500 PB/month
• Broadcast TV
 Year-end 2006 U.S. Internet traffic per capita: 2 GB/month
 Year-end 2006 U.S. TV consumption per capita: 40 GB/month
(soft figure, assumes 3 hr/day, at 1 Mbps, no HDTV, ...)
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Revenue per MB:
• SMS:
$1,000.00
• cellular calls:
1.00
• wireline voice:
0.10
• residential Internet:
0.01
• backbone Internet traffic:
0.0001
Volume is not value, but is an indicator of ecosystem health and
growth!
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Further data, discussions, and
speculations in papers and
presentation decks at:
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko
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