The Growth of Internet Traffic While some previous estimates of the Internet’s growth rate were exaggerated, market research firms now generally agree that Internet bandwidth consumption is growing at about 100% per year. Based on its research, IDC expects this growth rate to persist until 2007, with aggregate traffic growing from an estimated 180 petabits/day in 2002 to 5,175 petabits/day by the end of 2007. Sources of traffic growth will include new subscribers and increased Internet usage by existing enterprise subscribers. However, most of the traffic growth is expected to come from wider adoption of broadband access services by existing subscribers.

Broadband access encourages increased usage of the Internet and enables new user services such as IP telephony, digital media distribution, etc. Along with the need for more bandwidth to support these new services, residential and business customers alike are expecting higher levels of network reliability and predictability at lower and lower price per bit levels. The ability to predict and guarantee service levels and maintain QoS will not only add to customer or user satisfaction but also open up new competitive advantages by leveraging the network as a strategic asset.

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