I first wrote about the exaflood in May. The quick definition of the exaflood from Wikipedia:

The word exabyte is the basis for the term “exaflood”, a neologism created by Bret Swanson of the Discovery Institute in a January 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial.[13] Exaflood refers to the rapidly increasing torrent of data transmitted over the Internet. The amount of information people upload, download and share on the Internet is growing (due in large part to video, audio and photo applications), at an exponential rate while the capacity of the Internet, its bandwidth, is limited and susceptible to a “flood” of data. “One exabyte is the equivalent of about 50,000 years of DVD quality video.”

Last week Geoff Daily wrote a great article on the exaflood or “peta-plosion” that we’re already experiencing. Geoff outlines quite simply how the exaflood is being created (email, video, medical records for starters) and how that relates to the need for more bandwidth. Basically, the tons of info that’s being created is info that should be shared and the best way to share that should be a network. His post is definitely worth reading. Continue reading →