Cisco announced the results of the annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast, 2009-2014, which projects that global Internet traffic will increase more than fourfold to 767 exabytes, or more than 3/4 of a Zettabyte, by 2014. This amount is 100 exabytes higher than the projected level in 2013, or an increase the equivalent of 10 times all the traffic traversing Internet Protocol networks in 2008.
The growth in traffic will continue to be dominated by video, exceeding 91% of global consumer IP traffic by 2014. Improvements in network bandwidth capacity and Internet speeds, along with the increasing popularity of HDTV and 3DTV are key factors expecting to quadruple IP traffic from 2009 to 2014.
The Cisco VNI Forecast, which focuses on two primary user groups—consumers and businesses—was developed as an annual study to estimate global IP traffic growth and trends. Projections are based on Cisco analysis and modeling of traffic, usage, and device data from independent analyst sources. Cisco validates its forecast, inputs, and methodology with data provided by service providers worldwide.
Cisco says IP traffic in the Middle East and Africa will reach 1 exabyte per month by 2014 at a rate of 45%. Monthly Internet traffic in the Middle East and Africa will generate 182 million DVDs worth of traffic, or 727 petabytes per month. The Middle East and Africa will have the strongest mobile data traffic growth of any region at 133 percent CAGR, followed by Asia Pacific at 119 percent and North America at 117%.
“Service providers are faced with evolving bandwidth and scalability requirements as residential, business and mobile consumers continue to demonstrate a healthy appetite for advanced video services across a variety of networks and devices. IP networks must be intelligent and flexible enough to support this tremendous variety of traffic growth. The Cisco VNI Forecast offers a global snapshot of video’s significance in our daily lives and signals the need for further network preparations to support the quadrupling of the Internet and the more than 1 billion online video users by 2014,” says Olaf Krahmer, President and GM, Cisco Egypt.
