The term itself refers to the rapidly increasing stream of data transmitted via the Internet.
The word “exabyte” is the basis for the term "exaflood". Exaflood is a term created by Bret Swanson in a Wall Street Journal editorial; it is based on the term exabyte (one quintillion bytes). 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.
The word “exabyte” is the basis for the term "exaflood". Exaflood is a term created by Bret Swanson in a Wall Street Journal editorial; it is based on the term exabyte (one quintillion bytes). 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.
In the modern world we generate many exabytes of data each year; modern networks are simply not prepared to handle this exaflood.
by A. Kirkland June 13, 2007