Recent trade press indicates that mobile data traffic is estimated to increase 66-fold between 2008 and 2013. People will continue to expect more from their networks at home, on the road, and at the office.

As a result, our industry needs to increase the control, security, and intelligence of the network to sup¬port the any-to-any service vision: the enterprise, access, core, and data center networks must enable any user, with any device, for any content, anywhere.

Here are some of the top trends that will impact how next genera¬tion networks are architected and designed. These trends impact service provider and enterprise networks and require new system, software, and silicon innovations to materialize.

1. Visual Networking
Video is well on its way to becoming the dominant traffic component across the Internet. As Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) grows in popularity, there will be accelerated growth of network-based video.
Another piece of this story relates to the growing use of telepresence and video conferencing. As Cisco, HP, and Tandberg continue to develop increasingly good systems, usage goes up.

Consultancy Frost & Sullivan estimates that the sector will grow globally to a whopping USD 1.44 billion by 2013. As the quality of these systems increases, the enterprise world responds favorably. The better they are, the more likely they are to be deployed as alterna¬tives to travel and lodging expense and time away from work. Furthermore, don’t underesti¬mate the green angle of telepresence—sizeable carbon offsets result from the increased use of these technologies.
No doubt about it—ubiquitous IP video will drive the network generation architectures.

2. Video Adoption and the Magic of Hypersyndication
In 2008, Dick Costolo of Google spoke about a new phenomenon gripping the industry—a phenomenon that he tagged “Hypersyndica¬tion.” To Costolo’s way of thinking, hypersyn¬dication refers to a world in which all available content is universally accessible and is shared, mixed, socialized, and distributed through channels that the creator of the content never thought about.

Furthermore, the impact of com¬munity is extremely important. Digital natives are extraordinarily community-oriented and in fact embrace all community-supportive technologies while eschewing those that don’t. All media in this new world is shared, and con¬versations about its role are growing in importance.