Internet Traffic Swells on Web 2.0

The amount of data transferred on the Internet has rapidly increased due to the spread of Web publishing, a private think-tank said Sunday.

The Samsung Economic Research Institute said that the so-called Web 2.0 movement is the main reason behind the surge of online traffic. For example, the number of blog users has increased 16 fold in the past two years, and the number of monthly blog postings by 10 fold, it said.

The most dramatic growth was seen in the circulation of short video clips, often referred to as UCC (user-created content) in Korea. Visitors to video sharing services at major portal sites more than quadrupled between March 2006 and March 2007.

The volume of information flow on the Internet will continue to expand at an ever-increasing speed, the report said.

``The amount of two-way data traffic has soared as the role of Netizens has changed from that of spectator to active participant,'' said the report authored by Kim Chong-man. ``The development of IPTV, e-learning and wireless Internet services will accelerate this trend.''

The phrase Web 2.0 refers to the emergence of web-based communities and services, which are designed to facilitate collaboration and sharing of collective wisdom between users. Wikipedia is one of the Web 2.0 services that is well known globally, and Naver's Knowledge-In is also a popular site based in South Korea.

The report said that Korea's IT industry has benefited from the country's well-established broadband network infrastructure, but the system isn't organized well enough to handle the volatile traffic. At major portal sites, the number of peak-time visitors on a given day is about 17 times the daily low, the report said.

``New technologies are needed for firms to efficiently utilize their limited IT resources and to maximize their income from minimum investment,'' it said. ``Improving old technologies may not be enough. The industry needs to create new technologies that suit the next generation IT environment.''

Samsung suggested ``utility computing'' as a plausible solution. Utility computing is the outsourcing of IT services and hardware. It enables multiple companies to share computing resources such as CPUs and servers. Under the system, customer companies can deal with any sudden peak in traffic that they may not be able to manage single-handedly.