It is said that one picture is worth a thousand words.
The following diagram shows some historical data points
and projections on the growth of Internet backbone line
speed and the growth of the conventional router port speeds:
It is said that one picture is worth a thousand words.
The following diagram shows some historical data points
and projections on the growth of Internet backbone line
speed and the growth of the conventional router port speeds:
It is easy to see that Internet backbones grow much faster
than the conventional routing technology does.
In fact, today's demand for backbone speed is close to what
conventional router technology can deliver.
The reason for that is that progress of conventional routing technology
depends heavily on progress in the speed and capacity of semiconductors,
which on average follows Moore's Law, i.e. doubling every two years.
At the same time, Internet traffic is doubling every 6-9 months.
Our projection shows that the Internet will reach the terabit-per-second
threshold in 2004-2005, and Internet Service Providers should be
prepared to run networks at that speed.
However, the conventional routing technology is simply unable to
keep up.
Pluris Inc's routing technology will amplify the power of
conventional technology by as much as 4 orders of magnitude (10,000 times)
by making large numbers of routing engines work in parallel.
If exponential growth in Internet demand continues, this technology
is sufficient to keep the Internet running for another 10 years.
If the growth slows down, our technology may prove to be the
ultimate solution.
In any case, the rumors of the Internet's demise are premature.