Compound current traffic by a growth rate to forecast future load and the year the link runs out of capacity.
Traffic growth is multiplicative, so a 35% annual rate quadruples load in under five years. Taking logarithms of both sides of the compound-growth formula gives the exact time at which the forecast crosses your upgrade trigger and, separately, the line rate itself. The upgrade trigger date is the one that matters operationally, because procurement, cabling and change windows all have to fit between it and the day the link saturates.
Network Growth Forecast
traffic = current × (1 + growth)^years; years to a target = ln(target ÷ current) ÷ ln(1 + growth).
traffic = current × (1 + growth)^years; years to a target = ln(target ÷ current) ÷ ln(1 + growth). Traffic growth is multiplicative, so a 35% annual rate quadruples load in under five years. Taking logarithms of both sides of the compound-growth formula gives the exact time at which the forecast crosses your upgrade trigger and, separately, the line rate itself.
The upgrade trigger date is the one that matters operationally, because procurement, cabling and change windows all have to fit between it and the day the link saturates.
This calculator takes 5 inputs: Current peak traffic, Annual growth rate, Years to forecast, Installed link capacity, Upgrade trigger threshold. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.