Content Delivery Network importance to increase by 2017
With more and more people accessing the internet around the world, it’s no surprise that we believe CDN importance will rise dramatically over the coming years. As the number of connected citizens continues to expand, the pressure on global networks to cope with increased traffic will inevitably mean that innovative technologies are required to take the strain.
Backing up this belief, Cisco recently published their Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast for 2012-2017. The study provides a general overview of what internet use will look like in the coming 5 years, during which it projects global IP traffic to increase 3 fold. This isn’t surprising, given the huge success of cheap mobile devices and internet connected appliances. The average annual run rate in 2017 is set to exceed 1.4 zettabytes. This is significant, as the total amount of data that traversed the internet between 1984 and 2012 was only 1.2 zettabytes, meaning that 2017 traffic will almost exceed the total amount of traffic the internet has experienced in its entire history. These figures show that CDN importance will be a hot topic by 2017.
Furthermore, the report goes on to explain how peak traffic is increasing at a faster rate than average traffic, with a 41% increase for peak compared to 34% for average in 2012. This equally highlights CDN importance, as content delivery networks have strong mechanisms and load balancers built in for managing traffic and allowing extra bandwidth to be made available to sites during peak load.
As a testament to the rise in popularity of cheap mobile devices in the developing world, as well as flagship phones and tablets that are selling in increasing numbers, Cisco estimate that 68% of internet traffic in 2017 will be generated by Wi-Fi and mobile connected devices, with almost half of all traffic coming from non-PC devices. With advanced caching and compression technologies, CDN importance for mobile networks is particularly high, enabling rich multimedia to travel across high bandwidth mobile networks with ease.
However, the most telling finding for CDN importance to come out of the Cisco study is that over half of all internet traffic will be carried across a content delivery network by 2017. This highlights how important it is for website owners to implement a high quality CDN in order to boost their website speed and ensure their customers get the best end user experience possible, without slowdowns.