Tag Archives: Cisco

Mobile traffic grew 159% in 2010 . . . Tablets giving big boost

Among other findings in the latest version of Cisco’s always useful Internet traffic updates:

  • Mobile data traffic was even higher in 2010 than Cisco had projected in last year’s report. Actual growth was 159% (2.6x) versus projected growth of 149% (2.5x).
  • By 2015, we should see one mobile device per capita . . . worldwide. That means around 7.1 billion mobile devices compared to 7.2 billion people.
  • Mobile tablets (e.g., iPads) are likely to generate as much data traffic in 2015 as all mobile devices worldwide did in 2010.
  • Mobile traffic should grow at an annual compound rate of 92% through 2015. That would mean 26-fold growth between 2010 and 2015.

Did Cisco just blow $2.9 billion?

Cisco better hope wireless “net neutrality” does not happen. It just bought a company called Starent that helps wireless carriers manage the mobile exaflood.

See this partial description of Starent’s top product:

Intelligence at Work

Key to creating and delivering differentiat ed ser vices—and meeting subscriber demand—is the ST40’s ability to recognize different traffic flows, which allows it to shape and manage bandwidth, while interacting with applications to a very fine degree. The system does this through its session intelligence that utilizes deep packet inspection (DPI) technology, ser vice steering, and intelligent traffic control to dynamically monitor and control sessions on a per-subscriber/per-flow basis.

The ST40’s interaction with and understanding of key elements within the multimedia call—devices, applications, transport mechanisms, policies—and assists in the ser vice creation process by:

Providing a greater degree of information granularity and flexibility for billing, network planning, and usage trend analysis

Sharing information with external application ser vers that perform value-added processing

Exploiting user-specific attributes to launch unique applications on a per-subscriber basis

Extending mobility management information to non-mobility aware applications

Enabling policy, charging, and Quality of Ser vice (QoS) features

Traffic management. QoS. Deep Packet Inspection. Per service billing. Special features and products. Many of these technologies and features could be outlawed or curtailed under net neutrality. And the whole booming wireless arena could suffer.