New technologies are dramatically transforming the Internet and could boost IP traffic in the United States more than 50-fold within the next decade, according to “Estimating the Exaflood: The Impact of Video and Rich Media on the Internet,” a report released today by the Discovery Institute.

“Innovations like YouTube, IPTV, high-definition video and mobile phone cameras are driving this new wave of data—or exaflood—of Internet and IP traffic,” said Bret Swanson, an adjunct fellow at the Discovery Institute and co-author of the report. “Many of the new online opportunities we can’t even imagine today. But these exciting applications and services will only be possible if we make large new investments in broadband fiber-optic and wireless networks.”

The 24-page report, co-authored by Swanson and George Gilder, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, describes the technologies and trends that will drive Internet growth. It projects IP traffic levels overall and by application. By 2015, video calling and virtual windows, for example, could total 400 exabytes a year, or about 40 percent of U.S. traffic.

An exabyte is equal to one billion gigabytes, or approximately 50,000 times the contents of the U.S. Library of Congress. By the end of 2006, U.S. Internet traffic was approaching one exabyte per month.

The report estimates annual totals for various categories of U.S. IP traffic in 2015. It projects:

• Movie downloads and P2P filesharing of 100 exabytes.
  
  
• Internet video, gaming andvirtual worlds of 200 exabytes.
  
  
• Non-Internet IPTV of 100exabytes, and possibly much more.
  
  
• Business IP traffic of 100exabytes.

“As real broadband is deployed, these data tributaries will swell into an exaflood,” said Gilder.

“We’ve entered the third phase of Net evolution,” Swanson said. “The first phase was the original Arpanet research project and early enthusiasts. The second phase was the e-mail and Web browser explosion of 1995 that brought the Net to the masses. Today’s video and rich media surge begins the third phase. It will be bigger than the first two.”

The report estimates that by 2015 annual U.S. Internet and IP traffic will reach 1,000 exabytes, or one zettabyte, which is one million million billion bytes of data. A zettabyte is roughly equivalent to 50 million Libraries of Congress.

According to the report, capacity in broadband access networks to homes and businesses must expand by a factor of between 10 and 100 over the next few years. New network investments expanding bandwidth, storage, and traffic management capabilities in the U.S. could total more than $100 billion in the next half-decade alone.

Technology remains the key engine of U.S. economic growth and its competitive edge, the authors contend. Policies that encourage investment and innovation in our digital and communications sectors should be among America’s highest national priorities, they believe.