1. 1 Internet traffic growth trends Andrew Odlyzko Digital Technology Center University of Minnesota http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko

2. 2 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

3. 3 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

4. 4 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 5,281 OC12-miles mid – 199838,485 mid – 1999 268,794 Extrapolating back to mid-1994 using 10x annual rate: 5 OC12-miles  2,000 T1-miles ??????

5. 5 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 …

6. 6 http://www.dtc.umn.edu/mints

7. 7 ESnet: longest available run of reliable traffic statistics: Traffic accepted by ESnet in June of each year year TB 19900.079 19910.187 19920.437 19930.628 19941.72 19952.82 19962.81 19974.61 19988.83 199918.8 200035.7 200143 2002103 2003166 2004282 2005470 20061210 20072670 1990 to 2007 compound annual growth rate: 85%

8. 8 Hong Kong: intriguing slowdown year growth rate in Internet traffic over the previous year, for October of each year 2002182% 2003377 2004172 2005 68 2006 29 2007 21 Per-capita traffic intensity in Hong Kong is about 6x the U.S. level.

9. 9 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,...)

10. 10 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!

11. 11 Further data, discussions, and speculations in papers and presentation decks at: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko