Nielsen’s Law

Nielsen’s Law of Internet bandwidth is similar to the more well known Moore’s Law which says that computers double in specs every 18 months.

Nielsen’s Law is that Internet bandwidth grows 50% in capacity every 12 months.

This seems right to be. I can recall using a 2400bps modem for bbs dialup in the early 90s. And some modems were only 300 bps. Then we had dialup going up to 56kbps in the mid to late 90s and now we have broadband at 2 – 4 Mbps.

This is one of the reasons why I say the future is fibre networks to the home at 100 Mbps or even 1 Gbps.

Applying Nielsen’s Law to the 300 bps one had in 1983, one has the following path which is close to reality:

1983 300 b/s
1992 12 kb/s
1994 26 kb/s
1996 56 kb/s
2000 289 kb/s
2004 1.5 mb/s
2006 3.3 mb/s

And projecting forward:

2010 17 mb/s
2015 126 mb/s

So we have less than a decade to get fibe to the home.