Cisco have released their annual report projecting the future of internet traffic. The prediction is that internet traffic is likely to double year on year from now until 2012. By 2012 internet traffic is expected to reach half a zettabyte. It is hard to compare any existing data structures, storage facilities or network traffic figures to half a zettabyte. What is a Zettabyte? Let’s start with the more commonly known gigabyte and work from there.

Gigabyte = 1000 Megabytes

Terabyte = 1000 Gigabytes

Petabyte = 1000 Terabytes

Exabyte = 1000 Petabytes

Zettabyte = 1000 Exabytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

These figures are still incomprehensible but when you consider that a Zettabyte is equal to 250billion DVDs which if they were stacked on top of one another would make 7 stacks capable of reaching the moon with a total height of 2,750,000km.

This traffic increase is predicted due to the increasing use of video and web 2.0 including social networking. This increase is illustrated by the BBCs intention of streaming BBC 1 programming over the internet in 2009. The strain on ISP seems to be showing no sign of slowing, will the country’s infrastructure cope?