Overview of Broadband Access Technologies

Over the past decade of unprecedented advances in information and communications technology (ICT), a variety of bandwidth-demanding applications, including Internet access, e-mail, e-commerce, voice over internet protocol (VoIP), video conferencing, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), and online gaming, have emerged and been rapidly deployed in the network. As the Internet traffic grows, it is becoming urgent to efficiently manage, move, and store increasing amount of mission-critical information, thus accelerating the demand for data storage systems. Consequently, the traffic in both public and private communication networks has experienced dramatic growth. As reported by Cisco’s visual networking index, the Internet traffic in 2011 has reached around 28 k petabytes per month while it was less than 200 petabytes per month in 2001 [1]. According to the sixth annual Cisco(R) Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2011–2016) [2], global IP traffic has increased eightfold over the past 5 years, and will increase 4-fold over the next 5 years. In 2016, global IP traffic will reach 1.3 zettabytes per year or 109.5 exabytes per month. Overall, IP traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29% from 2011 to 2016. Therefore, to meet the challenge caused by the increased network traffic, telecommunication service providers and enterprises are driven to enhance their networks in providing enough bandwidth for new arising services.