New report predicts the third phase of Internet evolution

Innovations like YouTube, IPTV, high-definition video, and mobile phone cameras are driving this new wave of data, or exaflood, of Internet and IP traffic, according to the report.

Titled "Estimating the Exaflood: The Impact of Video and Rich Media on the Internet", the report describes the technologies and trends that will drive Internet growth in the coming decade. The study projects overall IP traffic levels and also breaks them out by application.

For example, the report says that by 2015 video calling and virtual windows could total 400 exabytes a year, or about 40% of US traffic. An exabyte is equal to one billion gigabytes, or approximately 50,000 times the entire contents of the US Library of Congress.

By the end of 2006, US Internet traffic was already approaching one exabyte per month.

The report concludes that, as real broadband is deployed, the data tributaries will swell into an exaflood. We've entered the third phase of Net evolution.

The first phase was the original Arpanet research project and early enthusiasts. The second phase was the e-mail and Web browser explosion of 1995 that brought the Net to the masses. Today's video and rich media surge begins the third phase.

It will be bigger than the first two.

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