What are the key factors driving ongoing exponential bandwidth growth on IEEE 802.3™ Ethernet networks? All of them.
More users? Yes.
More access methods and higher access rates? Yes.
More bandwidth-intensive services? Yes - that, too.
Ethernet networks around the world are amid no less than continuous bandwidth explosion. A comprehensive, open industry assessment of bandwidth trends from across global markets and the expanse of application spaces - servers, data center networks, mobile networks, telecom networks, etc. - took place from September 2018 to September 2019. The resulting, publicly available IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Bandwidth Assessment report, which was released in April 2020, shows that every measurable underlying factor studied points to significant, continuing growth in bandwidth demand to be shouldered by Ethernet.
More users
Internet World Stats as of March 31, 2019, indicated there were about 4.4 billion internet users globally. That was about 57 percent of the world’s population, leaving about 3.3 billion individuals still to be connected (and, when they are connected, to push significant new bandwidth demands on the world’s Ethernet networks).
The number of users and the associated potential for growth in users connecting to the internet vary greatly from country to country.
China and India, for example, have a significant number of internet users but their usage rates remain relatively low. Only 58 percent of China’s population accesses the internet; only 41 percent of India’s does so. It’s clear that these two countries could account for significant bandwidth growth on Ethernet networks in years ahead.
On the other hand, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States all show usage rates of greater than 80 percent. Consequently, increased bandwidth demand on Ethernet networks from these countries is likely to be sourced from increase in the number of devices per user, access abilities/rates and application demand than from growth in the number of new internet users.
The growth in users that is driving Ethernet bandwidth explosion is not all about people. Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications for Internet of Things (IoT) applications is a growing factor, forecasted to reach 6 percent of global Internet Protocol (IP) traffic by 2022.
More access methods, higher access rates
When evaluating industry bandwidth needs, it’s important to understand that the number of users alone - human or machine - does not present the complete picture. A single user represents a growing number of devices, with each device potentially on the same or different networks ultimately placing bandwidth demand on global Ethernet wireline infrastructure.
By 2022, there will be about 29 billion devices connecting to the internet - and, if compound annual growth rate (CAGR) remains at 10 percent, that figure would grow to approximately 38 billion by 2025. The number of devices per capita and household are forecasted to grow by 2022 to 3.6 and 9, respectively. The growth in global traffic driven by the different device types varies significantly. The largest forecasted growth is for smartphones and ultra-high definition (UHD), 4K TV at 411 percent and 377 percent, respectively.
Taken together, such factors stand to drive average traffic per user and household by 2022 up to 85 Gigabits per month and 240 Gigabits month, respectively. Average traffic per user is to experience a nearly 200-percent increase per user and household for the 2017-2022 timeframe.
Furthermore, the difference between busy-hour and average traffic is expected to expand - from a difference of 3.3 times in 2017 to a difference of 6.9 times by 2025. This is especially important to note, given that network providers must build networks to meet their peak traffic demands. It is no surprise then that there’s zero hint of letup when it comes to delivering increased bandwidth speeds; forecasts call for 14.1-percent growth in speeds for fixed broadband networks, 17.3-percent growth in speeds for IEEE 802.11™ Wi-Fi® networks and 26.8-percent growth in speeds for cellular networks.
More services and applications
Another factor driving the Ethernet bandwidth explosion is increased services and applications. Forecast of global IP traffic growth for the 2017 to 2022 time period is slated for a CAGR of 26 percent, from 122 Exabytes per month to 396 Exabytes per month.
The specific influence of video is undeniable.
Over the past 15 years, video has been recognized as a leading contributor to the bandwidth explosion that many networks are experiencing. Submitted data showed that nearly 58 percent of download traffic is related to video streaming. Both from a global perspective and within each individual region of the world, the top application driving traffic share was YouTube.
Internet video and IP video on demand/managed IP video, which consumed 75 percent of data (approximately 90 Exabytes per month) in 2017, are forecasted to swell to 82 percent of data (approximately 325 EB per month) in 2022. This corresponds to a 29-percent CAGR over the period.
Evolution of video definition will be a driver of increased bandwidth demand in the next year. Standard-definition (SD) video represents 2 Megabits per second (Mb/s); high-definition (HD), 5 Mb/s to 7.2 Mb/s, and UHD, 15 Mb/s to 18 Mb/s. From 2017 to 2022, the number of 4K TV connections is forecasted to grow at a 38 percent CAGR. As adoption of UHD content and 4K TVs increases, the bandwidth demand will be significant by 2022 and beyond.
There are other emerging applications - virtual/augmented reality, connected cars, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and gaming, among them - that figure to represent substantial new bandwidth drivers. The impact of some of these innovations is easier to forecast in some cases than others. From 2017 to 2022, for example, virtual/augmented reality (for services such as training, telemedicine, virtual real estate, design, etc.) is forecasted for traffic growth of 65 percent CAGR (to 4.02 Exabytes per month). Connected/autonomous vehicles, on the other hand, are more of an unknown. Given the forecasted number of passenger cars, as well as the wireless connection, the car-to-cloud connection is potentially a large bandwidth demand. However, an accurate estimate is not possible due to the lack of information related to the types of applications and associated bandwidth demands.
Bandwidth explosion
Concludes the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Bandwidth Assessment report, “Relative to observed traffic in 2017, the submitted data to the 2020 Ethernet BWA indicates a broad diversity in the bandwidth growth rates of the various applications explored, ranging in 2025 from 2.3× to 55.4× the traffic levels of 2017.”
Of course, past trends may not be an accurate predictor of the future. Whether the projections for bandwidth growth are realized will depend on many factors - the ability to continually reduce cost per bit over time being among the most important. This is a crucial challenge facing the Ethernet community across application spaces globally. The question of whether the Ethernet industry’s increased traffic demands are best answered by introducing new rates greater than 400 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) and/or by increasing the numbers of existing interfaces in parallel configurations of lower speeds will depend largely on the industry’s ability to provide sufficiently cost-effective solutions at the higher rates.
Such decisions are left to be sorted out in the years ahead by the global, open standards-development community. Indeed, the IEEE 802.3 Industry Connections New Ethernet Applications Ad Hoc is already at work defining a call-for-interest for a new study group to explore Beyond 400 GbE.
