Peter,
You're probably right, as things stand today. That's an interesting account concerning the recent purchases you cited. I wasn't referring to peer storage, however, rather to off-site, but on-net, caching. By on-net I mean caching and payout at wirespeed on the access network, so as to avoid having to traverse from the edge and into the core, or multiple hops.
Whether for the purpose of end user file retrieval, or to offset very high backhaul charges in the upstream (to and from the Internet), I do believe we'll begin seeing more cache colocated on access networks (both physically and virtually) and at head end locations, before long.
Admittedly, I'm moving into another area of discussion and moving away from the original premise, but a related problem that I'm now addressing is that of overwhelming the first mile SP's transport to/from the Internet, once everyone has a 10 or 100 Mb/s access line. At that point I'm fairly certain that we'll see an uptick in caching for both Web and m-m files, where none or very little exists today.
If it were done up right, would you really care if you were moving files around on your basement hard drive to and from your entertainment center, or from your own personalized partition in a colo server or from a cahcing site?
While we're on the topic, from Telephonyonline.com:
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How many petabytes do you have?
By Carol Wilson, Aug 2, 2005
Level 3 Communications announced Tuesday that it is now carrying 3.0 petabytes, or quadrillion bytes, of Internet Protocol traffic daily, or the equivalent of transmitting the entire Library of Congress print collection more than 300 times a day.
That could make Level 3's IP network that largest by a U.S. carrier. AT&T carries a daily load of 4.411 petabytes per business day, or the equivalent to transmitting the printed contents of the Library of Congress every 3.6 minutes. But that includes both its IP and traditional circuit-switched voice networks, according to a spokesman. AT&T's IP network carries about 2.47 petabytes per day.
MCI declined to discuss traffic volume, citing lack of industry standards for such comparisons, and Sprint’s numbers were not available.
Level 3 officials attributed their company’s traffic growth to its wholesale business, supporting service provider customers including AOL, Comcast, Charter, Net2Phone, Skype, Speakeasy and more.
“Traffic on our network continues to grow faster than the broader Internet market, driven largely by consumer demand for Internet-based services from our cable, content, carrier, ISP and wireless customers,” said Gordon Boyes, vice president of Network and Internet Services for Level 3. “We believe that Level 3 operates an unparalleled, technologically advanced network that’s distinguished by its reliability, broad geographic reach and the ability to quickly scale to meet customer demand.”
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