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ⓒ 2011 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property.

Traffic TypesandGrowth in Backbone Networks

AlexandreGerber, Robert Doverspike
AT&T Labs .Research


ⓒ 2011 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property.

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.Overview of a US carrier inter-city backbone optical network:

.Services running on ROADMs

.Breakdown of IP services by business




This is not an industry-wide view, rather a single US ISP data point
.IP Services drill down:

.Application Mix

.Growth over the last decade


.Implications on content distribution efficiency:

.CDNs

.Migration of TV content and Multicast





Outline


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What’s on the top of fibers in backbone?What do we mean by traffic type?

3

Physical
Data Link

Network

Transport

Session

Presentation

Application

OSI 7 layer model

Fiber

DWDM

Ethernet PHY

Ethernet VLAN
MPLS VPN

IP

UDP

TCP

HTTP
Video

Reality

“Web”

RTP

MPLS

SONET/SDH/OTN















GTP

IP









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Private Line vs. IP ServicesSimplified depiction of core-segment network layers

4

IP Layer

SONET /SDH
Ring Layer

Wideband
DCS Layer

ROADM /
Pt-to-pt
DWDM Layer

Fiber Layer




Layer with automatic restoration
Layer without automatic restoration
DWDM = Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing
ROADM = Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer
DCS = Digital Cross-Connect System
IOS = Intelligent Optical Switch



IOS Layer


Broadband DCS Layer

Private Line
Services
(low rate)


IP Services


Private Line
Services
(high rate)


Private Line
Services
(line rate)


42%

15%

43%

40%
60%

Source: US ISP, Summer2010.








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What are these IP Services?

5
45%

5%

4%

17%

29%
Wireline Broadband Services of ISP

Wireless Services of ISP (Data Center Backhaul)

Wireless Services of ISP (Data Center To Internet)

MPLS VPN (inc. VoIP)

Business Internet Access and Hosting (inc. foreign and other US Wireline & Wireless Braodband Services)

Takeaway: Wireline Broadband Services is the largest source of traffic. Business traffic accounts for a large share, too. Wireless is not significant yet.

Source: US ISP, Average traffic. Summer 2010.


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2 components of IP Services growthA. Organic growth per Broadband subscriber
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Takeaway: stable organic growth over the last couple of years (32% CAGR). Slight acceleration over the last 2 years.

Source: US DSL Downstream traffic per subscriber.

Takeaway: this is a good data point to predict the long term growth rate of the Internet.

Normalized Peak Traffic per sub 2004-mid2010


Normalized Average Traffic per sub 2001-2010




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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80
90
100

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Broadband Penetration rate(Year over year growth rate)

Japan
USA
OECD

United Kingdom


2 components of IP Services growthB. Growth of Broadband penetration rate

7

Takeaway: Average growth rate of 31%/year from 2000 to 2009 in the US. Decreasing from 48% to 4% as we get closer to market saturation

Source: OECD.


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IP Services growth A US ISP view over the last 12 years

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Takeaway: combining the 2 types of growth, we see a growth of almost 4 orders of magnitude on that backbone over the last 12 years (blue) with a clear saturation over time.

Takeaway:
Cellular traffic follows a similar pattern approx 8 years later (red)

Source: US ISP. Monthly average backbone traffic.


ⓒ 2011 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property.

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What is that traffic?Layer 4 Protocol breakdown
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0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

4Q2002

2Q2003

4Q2003

2Q2004
4Q2004
2Q2005

4Q2005

2Q2006

4Q2006

2Q2007

4Q2007

2Q2008

4Q2008

2Q2009

4Q2009

2Q2010

Web/HTTP (inc. Multimedia)

P2P

Other

NetNews
Non HTTP Multimedia
Mail

Games

Business


Takeaway: HTTP is back! It is now the work-horse protocol of many applications and it accounts for 60% of the traffic.

Source: US ISP Backbone. Netflow.


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What is that traffic?Layer 7 Protocol breakdown: the rise of video

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0.0

1.0

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

6.0

Feb-09

Apr-09

Jun-09

Aug-09
Oct-09
Dec-09

Feb-10

Apr-10

Jun-10

Aug-10

Normalized Traffic Volumes

Other

P2P

Non HTTP Multimedia

HTTP Multimedia

Web/HTTP (excluding Multimedia)


Takeaway: Video traffic is running on the top of HTTP. Lately it has been growing at an annualized growth rate of 83%. How will it evolve?

Source: US DSL Downstream Traffic per subscriber during the busy hour.


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Implications of video growthRise of the Content Distribution Networks (CDN)

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0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%
100%
Backbone

Wireline Broadband Services

Wireless

CDN

Other


Takeaway: A few CDNs account for 39% to 55% of the traffic during the busy hour.

Source: US ISP, August 2010. CDN traffic identified in Netflow records based on IP addresses.


ⓒ 2011 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property.

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Are CDNs doing a good job?Yes!

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Takeaway: The distance traversed by CDN traffic on the backbone is 3 times shorter than the distance traversed by other content providers.

Source: US ISP, August 2010. OnNet traffic only (no hot potato peering traffic). Average air miles defined as the distance between the ingress access router and the egress access router weighted by the amount of traffic.

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5
3
3.5

CDN

Top 5 Content Providers

All Web traffic (incl. CDN)

All P2P traffic

Normalized On Net Air Miles



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200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Internet traffic

TV
Downstream traffic per household during the busy hour (kbps)

But TV traffic is delivered much more efficiently today than “Over the Top Videos”

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Source: Internet: Cisco VNI 2010: 14.9 GB/month/sub. Peak/average ratio 1.72. Video: assumes 2Mbps video stream to 50% of the households during the peak.  

Takeaway: Internet traffic is still much smaller than TV content consumed today. That TV content is distributed today much more efficiently via Broadcast or Multicast (IPTV).

Takeaway: The growth rate of backbone traffic will be determined by how much of that TV traffic will be migrated onto the Internet, how fast and how it will be distributed (e.g. Multicast vs. Unicast)?


ⓒ 2011 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property.

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.What is running on a US carrier backbone optical network?

.The largest single source of traffic is video traffic for Wirelinebroadband  subscribers over HTTP over TCP over MPLS over IP over ROADM.

.But there are many more traffic types: Private Lines, MPLS VPN, etc.



.How fast is the traffic growing?

.Combination of a stable organic growth of 32% per year with a deceleration of the growth of number of WirelineBroadband users.

.Strong growth of video traffic recently; overall organic growth recently above average



.What will happen to that video traffic?

.In the hands of a couple of CDNs that deliver traffic more efficiently than other content providers.

.But there is much more video traffic out there. If it migrates at a fast pace from Broadcast/Multicast to Unicaststreams on the Internet, it will significantly impact backbones.  





Summary

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ⓒ 2011 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property.

Thank You!

AlexandreGerber
gerber@research.att.com
AT&T presence at OFC:
http://www.research.att.com/conferences/ofc