Fierce Network points out that networks patterns are changing…

For 30 years, network traffic followed a rhythm you could set a clock by. A lull in the morning, a peak through the business day, demand falling off in the evening. And it flowed overwhelmingly in one direction: down, toward users pulling web pages, video and files. Networks were engineered around both assumptions. AI is breaking them. …

AI is driving the change, because AI doesn’t take lunch breaks. Human users generate requests intermittently and wait for responses, producing the peaks and valleys networks were built to anticipate. AI operates continuously, at machine speed, around the clock. As more traffic originates from machines rather than people, the daily curve loses its shape and demand approaches a constant load.

Not only are peak times changing – the direction of traffic is changing too…

Upstream bandwidth is now growing disproportionately faster than downstream. At MetTel, total bandwidth grew 30-40% annually, and last year 75-80% of that growth was upstream. For an industry that spent decades optimizing for heavy downstream and light upstream — asymmetry baked into everything from broadband tiers to consumer plans — that’s a striking reversal.

The source of the upstream surge is the edge. AI video processing at retail locations, camera-equipped wearables, and operational technology at oil and gas companies using cloud-based video analysis for asset management — all of it generates data that flows up and out of those environments, not down into them. As industry pushes AI inference closer to where data is generated — in factories, in the field, in the store — the return traffic is upstream by nature.

There’s more and the article looks at the implications for network engineers but I’m also wondering about implications for policymakers and local planners. Right now, the speed goals in Minnesota in 100 Mbps down and 20 up by 2026. Earlier this week, Bree Maki mentioned at the Tribal Telecommunications conference that we won’t make it and that it may be time to rethink that goal.