It’s nothing new that web traffic keeps growing thanks to more connected users and devices. Every video, email, image, sound, and video game session pushes the ceiling a little higher, and according to the folks at Cisco, annual web traffic will reach 3.3 zettabytes by 2021. What exactly is a zettabyte? To build the idea, take a one-terabyte hard drive… and multiply it by a billion.
An old phrase attributed to Bill Gates said that 640 kilobytes were “enough memory”. Over the years, several media outlets have questioned its legitimacy, but it still serves as a reference for recognizing that no one has the slightest idea what will happen in the computer market. If we move that to the web, the uncertainty is even greater. Today we are surrounded by seemingly indestructible digital empires; yet when we look closely, they are glass castles waiting for someone with a slingshot. On that fragility, the web grows. More users, more devices, more services. That growth translates into data, which in turn must be transferred and processed.
What exactly is a zettabyte?
The folks at Cisco have published a series of very interesting projections. For the year 2021, they calculate there will be 27.1 billion connections spread among 4.6 billion users. Traffic volume will reach 3.3 zettabytes per year, which brings us to a question: What is a zettabyte? In essence, a quantity of bytes expressed as 1,000 to the seventh power, or as many prefer, 10^21. Even if we used the 12-terabyte drives that Seagate launched on the market, we would need more than 83 million. Some colleague sites converted that to HD video, and the result is about 36 million years. At this point, we should note that the numbering is “base 1,000”, not “base 1,024”.
How does it affect us?
We’ve technically already surpassed a zettabyte of traffic, but the fact that we’re going to triple it in four years is chilling. Other Cisco data suggest that 82 percent will be video (both personal and commercial), and 73 percent will be a combination of WiFi and mobile links.
