Keeping Pace With IP Traffic
How Far We’ve Come
I doubt that the creators of the Internet Protocol (IP) envisioned the entire world running on it. But, that seems to be the way things are heading. Do you remember when people used to commit words to physical pieces of paper and have them manually delivered by humans in order to communicate a written message? Maybe you recall the days when a telephone was a telephone, or when your TV signal was an analog signal broadcast through the air? IP is taking over as the medium of delivery for virtually every form of communication.
The entire world of communication and entertainment is continuing on a collision course of convergence. I used to carry a cell phone, a handheld PDA (personal digital assistant), and an MP3player. If I wanted to get my email or access the Web, I had to carry my laptop computer. Now, I have one device that does all of the above and fits in my pocket. I used to watch TV at home, in my living room, on my TV. Now, I can view episodes of my favorite shows on the Web, watch shows on my cell phone, and download shows to my iPod. The real story here though is that this convergence of technologies is causing an exponential growth rate in IP traffic.
IP Growth Projected To Skyrocket
In a recent report, Cisco forecast that IP traffic will continue to double every 2 years and that it will quintuple by the year 2011. Cisco attributes the projected growth to a number of factors, including:
• Increased use of broadband Internet connections by small business
• Rapid growth of emerging markets such as Asia-Pacific
• Exponential growth of consumer IP traffic
Over the course of the next four years, Cisco predicts that consumer IP data traffic will actually surpass business IP data traffic. The growth of P2P (peer-to-peer) networking and online video viewing such as YouTube will be factors, however, IP traffic from the delivery of IP-based television and VoD (video on demand) services is actually projected to surpass IP usage from the Internet .
Business use of IP will continue to grow with initiatives like Microsoft’s UCC (Unified Communication and Collaboration), but the growth of IP traffic for business use in North America is forecast to increase at a slower, steadier pace than other regions or markets.
The Impact of IP Growth
Traditionally, IP networks have been the domain of businesses. More specifically, a large percentage of the overall IP traffic has been generated by North American businesses. As time goes on, IP traffic must be shared with consumers and other global regions, and leveraged by more technologies. How will this impact businesses? Do you need to care?
Well, one issue created by the exponential growth in the use of IP is the scarcity of IP addresses. With IPv4, the available IP addresses are virtually gone. Many organizations use NAT (network address translation) so that they can use non-routable, internal IP addresses that don’t share the same space. The issue has also been addressed with the development of IPv6. Among other changes and updates, IPv6 increases the available IP addresses to 2128, a number that should more than meet the needs for decades.
IPv6 is being adopted, slowly but surely, however it does not address the issue of bandwidth. There may be virtually unlimited addresses, but if the pipeline is overloaded and can’t handle the volume of traffic, businesses and consumers alike will be impacted. The networking infrastructure that makes up the backbone of the Internet needs to be expanded and improved to keep pace with the volume of IP data growth.
Organizations should be exploring their options for upgrading to an IPv6 infrastructure, but should also keep an eye on bandwidth. IEEE has created the HSSG (Higher Speed Study Group), which is working on developing new Ethernet standards for40Gbps and 100Gbps networks. Organizations may need to implement these faster networks when they become available in order to handle the increased IP traffic needs internally, and should also monitor IP traffic with ISP’s to make sure their data isn’t getting squeezed out by an IP traffic jam.