Without Big Investments in Telecom Soon, the Internet
Will Choke On Traffic, Says Insight Research
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Source: Business Wire
PARSIPPANY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE) via NewsEdge
Corporation -- If it took nearly 40,000 broadband
switches and routers to move an estimated 20,000
terabits per day generated by US Internet traffic last
year, imagine the investment needed to handle a
network that is essentially doubling every year.
That is what Insight Research did, and the NJ-based
telecommunications market research company now
estimates a whopping $50 billion dollars in new gear
will be needed over the next five years or US Internet
traffic will gradually grind to a halt.
According to Insight's report, "ATM, IP, and Broadband
Switching 2001-2006," total US Internet traffic in
2006 will exceed 1.5 million terabits per day. To
handle this growth, Insight expects the number of
broadband switches and routers to almost triple, at
the same time as the throughput capacity per switch
increases by a factor of 25. Essentially all of the
2006 switches used in distribution and backbone packet
networks will be new, and the aggregated investment
will amount to almost $50 billion, the report says.
"The so-called capacity glut is a chimera," says
Insight president Robert Rosenberg. "It's a mythical
creature invented by the investment community because
they couldn't justify their inability to distinguish
between the long-term telecom infrastructure
investments needed to meet forecasted demand and the
short-term market development capital that was thrown
at 'new economy' dot-coms. Our analysis suggests that
over the next five years a tremendous investment in
switching systems will be required or the network will
choke on its own traffic--and we just don't believe
that is going to be allowed to happen."
"ATM, IP, and Broadband Switching 2001-2006" forecasts
data traffic growth, the number of access, metro, and
core network connection points for accommodating the
forecasted traffic growth, and the types of equipment
and investment that will be needed to keep data
traffic moving within the US. |
