Firstly let’s understand what is ZettaByte?

Hmm, now simplified in bytes:

1 kilobyte          = 1,000
1 megabyte          = 1,000,000
1 gigabyte          = 1,000,000,000
1 terabyte          = 1,000,000,000,000
1 petabyte          = 1,000,000,000,000,000
1 exabyte           = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
1 zettabyte         = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Are these number’s just calculation or do they really exist in the real world? Yes! They do!!

But where! Just imagine, YouTube! NetFlix etc., Yesteryear, in 2012, it was estimated that upwards of 1 zettabyte of data existed in the world and that by 2020 there would be more than 40 zettabytes of data in the world at large!

What takes us to Zettabyte era, is the following:

Increased use of video content

VSP – or Video (content) Service Providers like Netflix and YouTube are at the top of the list in terms of the most globally streamed video services online. In 2016, Netflix represented 32.72% of all video streaming IP traffic, while YouTube represented 17.31%. The third spot is taken up by Amazon Prime Video where global data usage comes in at 4.14%.

Increase to wireless data traffic

Wireless hot spots and mobile data tops the race. As of 2016, the majority of devices that moved IP traffic and other data streams were hard-wired devices. Since then, wireless and mobile traffic have increased and are predicted to continue to increase rapidly. Cisco, a leading network device manufacturing company, predicts that by the year 2021, wired devices will account for 37% of total traffic while the remaining 63% will be accounted for through wireless and mobile devices. Furthermore, smartphone traffic is expected to surpass PC traffic by 2021; PCs are predicted to account for 25% of total traffic, down from 46% in 2016, whereas smartphone traffic is expected to increase from 13% to 33%

Increased broadband speeds

Broadband is what connects Internet users to the Internet, thus the speed of the broadband connection is directly correlated to IP traffic – the greater the broadband speed, the greater the possibility of more traffic that can traverse IP networks. Cisco estimates that broadband speeds are expected to double by 2021. In 2016, global average fixed broadband reached speeds as high as 27.5 Mbit/s but are expected to reach 53 Mbit/s by 2021. Between the fourth quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017, average fixed broadband speeds globally equated to 7.2 Mbit/s. South Korea was at the top of the list in terms of broadband speeds. In that period broadband speeds increased by 9.3%.

High-bandwidth applications need significantly higher broadband-speeds. Certain broadband technologies including Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL), and cable broadband are paving the way for increased broadband speeds. FTTH can offer broadband-speeds that are ten times (or even a hundred times) faster than DSL or cable.

Posted on: November 20, 2020, by : Bhavin Thakkar