The study – Metro Network Traffic Growth: An Architecture Impact Study – highlights video usage and the growth of data centres as the main cause for the increase.
Further results showed that 75% of traffic would stay in metro networks by 2017, compared to 57% today.
Video traffic is expected to increase by 720% by 2017, with cloud and data centre traffic to increase by an estimated 440%.
“This is the first traffic study to show the real impact of growth on operator networks,” said Basil Alwan, head of IP routing and transport at Alcatel-Lucent.
“The move to cloud-optimised metro networks plays to Alcatel-Lucent’s core strengths of deploying massively scalable, efficient and agile networks.”
Alcatel-Lucent’s cloud optimised metro solution is designed to deploy metro networks capable of meeting the expected surge in demand, as well as delivering cloud optimised services.
“We have unmatched expertise in IP and optical-product development and deployment, and a deep-seated understanding of end-to-end network and service management, both of which are critical to handle the imminent shift in the metro architecture,” Alwan added.
“Moving forward, Alcatel-Lucent will continue to develop a more SDN-enabled IP and optical portfolio to allow networks to evolve even further into a virtualised environment.”
The French vendor completed the trial of a 4G LTE public safety network in Las Vegas, US, in November this year.
