Global annual IP traffic will triple between 2014 and 2019 to reach 2 zettabytes, according to Cisco’s latest Visual Networking Index (VNI), published this week.
Annual IP traffic is due to reach 1 zettabyte – equal to 1 trillion gigabytes – in 2016.
"It will take only three additional years to reach the next zettabyte milestone," predicted Doug Webster, vice president of service provider products and solutions marketing at Cisco, on Wednesday.
The increase will be driven by a number of trends, including growth in the number of Internet users, personal devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections. Faster broadband connections and the adoption of bandwidth-hungry services like video and music streaming, and gaming will also play a role.
In 2014, there were 2.8 billion Internet users in the world, according to Cisco; this number is expected to increase to 3.9 billion – or 51% of the population – by 2019. Over the forecast period, the number of connected devices is expected to surge to 24 billion from 14 billion.
By 2019 14% of monthly IP traffic will be carried by mobile networks, while 53% will be carried over WiFi. Fixed connections will acc ount for the remaining 33%.
Average fixed-line broadband speeds will more than double over the 2014-2019 period, from 20.3 Mbps to 42.5 Mbps.
A vast amount of IP video will travel on these networks, accounting for 80% of annual IP traffic by 2019, compared to 67% in 2014, Cisco said.
Looking regionally, Asia-Pacific will generate the most IP traffic per month – 54.4 exabytes – by 2019, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21% over the forecast period.
North America will rank second with 49.7 exabytes per month, considerably ahead of Western Europe with 24.7 exabytes. Latin America and the Middle East and Africa will generate 12.9 and 9.4 exabytes per month respectively, while Central Europe will generate 16.9 exabytes per month.
