Global web traffic continues to grow

New statistics have revealed that global web traffic continued to increase in 2008.

According to the AT Internet Institute, web traffic rose by 4.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007 - something that may highlight a need for more reliable web hosting.

However, traffic growth has slowed over the last few years, with traffic surging by 27.1 per cent in 2004 before slowing to growth of 17.1 per cent in 2005, 7.7 per cent in 2006 and 6.3 per cent in 2007.

AT Internet Institute said that this does not necessarily mean that traffic is set to fall any time soon.

"With a long-term view, web traffic is still rising for an equivalent number of websites," it explained.

"Using 100 as a baseline for visits recorded in 2001, visits recorded in 2008 are at a baseline of 251 - 2.5 times as many in seven years."

Last year, Cisco Systems predicted that global IP traffic will reach half a zettabyte - equivalent to 0.5 trillion gigabytes - by 2012.

Written by Dipika Patel