Teleography says net traffic slowing

Consultancy Teleography says that the amount of net traffic is slowing down. The amount of net traffic travelling on backbone cables between nations increased by 104% in 2004, compared with only 49% in 2005.

Telegeography attributes the change to a global slowdown in the numbers of people signing up for high-speed net services.

The rate of growth of net traffic is shown by statistics from the London Internet Exchange (Linx), where over 150 net service firms swap data between each other. In just over a year, the amount of traffic flowing across Linx has increased from approximately 30 gigabits per second to over 67 Gbit/s. In 2000 only Gbit/s per second was recorded, the equivalent of a DVD film every 10 seconds.

Alan Mauldin, senior research analyst, said that growth rates in some territories remained high. Asia’s growth rate was 76% and Latin America’s was 70%, although both were lower than last year.

The amount of traffic flowing between nations is approximately one terabit per second; at the current rate of growth, this is expected to increase to three terabits per second by 2008.

Mr Mauldin attributed much of the recent growth to an increase in file-sharing. He said that the net was maturing in the sense that the numbers of those going online was slowing and those already online were using it as much as they were likely to. Another sign that the net is maturing, is a stabilisation in the prices for net backbone access which fell significantly before 2005.