Increased demand for video in all its forms is hogging the pipes

MediaPost Publications RAM: Bandwidth on the Run .

Now that we’re in the digital age, Internet traffic volumes are giving way to traffic jams that can bring business operations to a grinding halt. The primary driver is the explosion of Internet video. Its exponentially larger file sizes and bandwidth requirements strain the infrastructure, challenging organizations to meet the ever-growing demand. And more is added daily at a rate of 33 minutes of video per second.

During the tech bubble, bandwidth was abundant and there was excess capacity. What changed? Quite simply, it was the explosion in video. According to the u.s. Internet Industry Association, video consumes nearly 80 percent of all bandwidth. And that number continues to rise.

On the upside, video captures our attention in ways that static pages can’t. The downside is video files are exponentially larger than text documents. Even a graphics-intensive word processing document is unlikely to be more than 5 MB. A 90-second video can eat up 150 MB of storage and 13.3 Mbps of bandwidth. The drive toward high-definition video will push that number even higher. Add in the problems associated with multiple copies in multiple locations, multiple versions, multiple backups, etc., and it’s easy to see a crisis brewing.

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