From
the time I started the ARPANET in 1969, I have been keeping track of
the traffic. The traffic has grown by about a
trillion to one over the
intervening 40 years. For the first 20 years the Internet backbone
remained based on the ARPANET Interface Message Processors (IMPs). Then
as the Internet went comericial in 1991, many new makes of routers were
used, although they have continued to use the same basic
structure.
The community of users also grew rapidly, but they never had to move off the network. The underlying packet network is mostly invisable to the users so that even as the protocol changed from NCP to TCP/IP in 1983 and the equipment changed from time to time, the user community just continued to grow without interuption. Many of us have now been using the Internet without interuption for 40 years.
For the period from 1969 to 1990 the government, either DARPA or NSF, kept accurate records of the network traffic. Then, when many different commericial organizations interconnected to form the Internet backbone in the 1990's, there were no accurate records since each company kept their own traffic confidential. Thus, from 2000 to 2001, I undertook to determine the total traffic by collecting traffic data under NDA's with the 20 major Internet backbone providers. This provided sufficient data so that the intervening years traffic could be interperlated. Then, more recently, most every country in the world has been reporting their traffic so that the traffic in the inbetween years could again be interperlated. This is how the data below was collected and put together.
The volume data is in petabytes per month where a petabyte per month is equal to 1,000 terabytes per month. Also listed is the speed data which is in Gigabits per second at peak hour. The relationship between Gigabits/second and petabytes/month varies over the history of the network as the useage pattern spread out as people worked at night and in many time zones.
The community of users also grew rapidly, but they never had to move off the network. The underlying packet network is mostly invisable to the users so that even as the protocol changed from NCP to TCP/IP in 1983 and the equipment changed from time to time, the user community just continued to grow without interuption. Many of us have now been using the Internet without interuption for 40 years.
For the period from 1969 to 1990 the government, either DARPA or NSF, kept accurate records of the network traffic. Then, when many different commericial organizations interconnected to form the Internet backbone in the 1990's, there were no accurate records since each company kept their own traffic confidential. Thus, from 2000 to 2001, I undertook to determine the total traffic by collecting traffic data under NDA's with the 20 major Internet backbone providers. This provided sufficient data so that the intervening years traffic could be interperlated. Then, more recently, most every country in the world has been reporting their traffic so that the traffic in the inbetween years could again be interperlated. This is how the data below was collected and put together.
The volume data is in petabytes per month where a petabyte per month is equal to 1,000 terabytes per month. Also listed is the speed data which is in Gigabits per second at peak hour. The relationship between Gigabits/second and petabytes/month varies over the history of the network as the useage pattern spread out as people worked at night and in many time zones.
Internet
Traffic in PetaBytes/month and in peak Gigabits/second
Collected by L. Roberts
Copyright 2009 L.G. Roberts
Collected by L. Roberts
Copyright 2009 L.G. Roberts
| Year | PB/month | Peak Gbps |
| 1970 | 2.569E-09 | 3.303E-08 |
| 1971 | 4.952E-09 | 7.330E-08 |
| 1972 | 9.176E-09 | 1.336E-07 |
| 1973 | 1.457E-08 | 2.195E-07 |
| 1974 | 2.111E-08 | 3.235E-07 |
| 1975 | 2.911E-08 | 4.510E-07 |
| 1976 | 3.886E-08 | 6.062E-07 |
| 1977 | 5.066E-08 | 8.038E-07 |
| 1978 | 7.049E-08 | 1.090E-06 |
| 1979 | 9.466E-08 | 1.475E-06 |
| 1980 | 1.240E-07 | 1.942E-06 |
| 1981 | 1.657E-07 | 2.600E-06 |
| 1982 | 2.233E-07 | 3.959E-06 |
| 1983 | 6.527E-07 | 9.087E-06 |
| 1984 | 1.453E-06 | 2.171E-05 |
| 1985 | 3.401E-06 | 5.292E-05 |
| 1986 | 1.079E-05 | 1.687E-04 |
| 1987 | 4.916E-05 | 6.922E-04 |
| 1988 | 1.772E-04 | 2.573E-03 |
| 1989 | 6.150E-04 | 8.388E-03 |
| 1990 | 0.001479 | 0.02181 |
| 1991 | 0.003564 | 0.05190 |
| 1992 | 0.008162 | 0.1184 |
| 1993 | 0.01825 | 0.2645 |
| 1994 | 0.04201 | 0.6128 |
| 1995 | 0.1192 | 1.496 |
| 1996 | 0.3638 | 3.804 |
| 1997 | 1.177 | 9.779 |
| 1998 | 3.962 | 24.26 |
| 1999 | 13.86 | 63.69 |
| 2000 | 44.95 | 198.7 |
| 2001 | 139.4 | 526.8 |
| 2002 | 278.2 | 1,089 |
| 2003 | 536.0 | 2,108 |
| 2004 | 1,052 | 4,070 |
| 2005 | 2,023 | 7,725 |
| 2006 | 3,342 | 12,761 |
| 2007 | 4,957 | 18,928 |
| 2008 | 7,468 | 28,516 |
| 2009 | 10,598 | 40,468 |