Two recently published white papers have projected large increases in ICT network traffic over the next five years. 

Each points to a different source of growth, which impacts different parts of the corporate network. Mobile data (of which video will form an increasing part) will affect the WAN and campus network; cloud computing will affect the data centre network.

Tony Munro, Solutions Executive: Dimension Data Africa equated the impact of the added traffic to that of a freight train.

“The network forms the basis for both growth points, so it’s important to consider their combined demand when planning your future capacity.”

Moving to mobility The most recent of the white papers – both published by Cisco – is titled Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012-2017.

It documents an on-going initiative to track and forecast the impact of visual networking applications on global networks, and is partly based on data published by several well-known research houses.

According to the research, global mobile data traffic grew by a massive 70% in 2012  alone, with mobile video traffic exceeding 50% of total traffic for the first time.

More importantly, the paper projects that mobile video will increase 16-fold between 2012 and 2017 – which means that two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video-related by 2017.

Much of this growth is created by additional devices that will be connected to networks, such as smartphones and tablets, but also to large numbers of sensors and monitors such as medical monitoring apparatuses, asset tracking devices, GPS tracking devices, temperature sensors, and so forth. These will generate machine to machine traffic.

Additionally, each connected device will generate more traffic as the applications that run on them become more sophisticated.

These connected devices won’t only increase network traffic for service providers, but also for enterprise networks, as more mobile devices and sensors connect back to business applications, and users on the enterprise network communicate with one another via video, using the wired and wireless network.

Towards a cloudy future
The second research paper, Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2011-2016, projects the growth of global data centre and cloud-based IP traffic, and describes the trends associated with data centre virtualisation and cloud computing.

One of the white paper’s conclusions reads as follows: ‘Global data centre traffic is firmly in the zettabyte era and will nearly quadruple from 2011 to reach 6.6 zettabytes annually by 2016. A rapidly growing segment of data centre traffic is cloud traffic, which will increase six-fold over the forecast period and represent nearly two-thirds of all data centre traffic by 2016.’

Interestingly, 76% of this traffic remains inside the data centre, which highlights the tremendous pressure exerted on data centre networks today.

The nature of data centre cloud traffic requires specialist network architectures to manage the most basic building block of cloud computing – the virtual machine – in the same way as a physical machine.

Additionally, storage traffic, which makes up 40% of data centre network traffic, becomes an important consideration as it moves to IP, thus adding even more load onto an already stretched network.

Preparing for impact
Munro believes projections like these should concern forward-thinking organisations.

‘When planning your enterprise mobility, visual communications and network infrastructure strategies, you need to be aware of these projected increases and start preparing for their impact. The growth in visual communications and cloud computing combined will require that most businesses double their network capacity at least every three years.

This is, of course, an estimate. Most computing infrastructure has a depreciation cycle of three to four years, while networking has an average depreciation cycle of seven years. It is likely that these trends will reduce the depreciating cycle for networking so that upgrades can be conducted more regularly.

‘In Dimension Data’s experience, many organisations are still unaware of what lies ahead. By far the majority don’t yet have video capabilities on the desktop – an area of almost certain growth in the near future. At the same time, many are already testing private cloud environments and investigating the possibility of moving their least risk-prone business applications to the cloud in order to save costs.

‘Again, the success of a cloud strategy depends on whether the network can handle the traffic,’ said Munro.

‘Only when the adoption of both video and cloud-based applications reaches higher levels, do many businesses realise their network is groaning under the weight, and begin to experience performance issues or, worse, increased outages.’

Partnering with care
What should organisations do to better brace themselves for impact? Munro emphasized the importance of in-depth network knowledge and skills, and understanding the profile of traffic across your network.

‘It’s important that your organisation forms a clear picture of its current state, including which parts of the network demand the most bandwidth. Then you need to project the future state of the network keeping future demands in mind. Lastly, create a roadmap to steer your on-going investment and development.

‘If you don’t have the necessary expertise on board,’ advised Munro, ‘it’s time to partner with the right people. The best networking experts don’t just provide integration and implementation skills where you fall short. They can also offer broader, multi-disciplinary architectural and consulting services to assist you strategically in the long term.

‘Your network forms the basis of ICT in your business. Changes to it will affect every area, including information security, data centres, software applications, communications and collaboration, and more. Due to the critical nature of a well-prepared network, businesses can no longer face the future without it.’