One of the reasons for the rapid growth is the continuous increase of international data traffic. This is mainly driven by two factors: Firstly, the growth of data-intensive applications such as video streaming, HDTV via the Internet, online gaming and user-generated content in social networks and secondly, the ever-increasing number of mobile devices with Internet access which enable the use of media content anytime and anywhere.
Growth can also be attributed to the capacities booked by major customers. At the beginning of the year, a total capacity of 12.9 terabit was booked. By now, the number has increased by 40.3 percent, reaching 18.1 terabits. This year, more than fifty 100-Gigabit Ethernet lines have already been booked – twice as much as was forecasted for the entire year.
The capacity of the Internet Exchange with the world’s highest data traffic will not, however, reach its limits in the near future: A total capacity of 48 terabits was implemented during modernization in 2013. The growth in recent years has been rapid, however: The first time traffic reached the peak of 2 Tbit/s was not until September 2012. In 2005 however, the peak, in comparison, was a modest 22 Gbit/s and when the DE-CIX first opened in 1995, the entire capacity of the Internet Exchange was only a mere 10 Mbit/s with three connected ISPs.