Global IP Traffic to Increase More than Fourfold by 2014 – Cisco

Cisco, worldwide leader in networking has announced the results of the annual Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast, 2009-2014.
The forecast projects that global Internet traffic will increase more than fourfold to 767 exabytes, or more than 3/4 of a Zettabyte, by 2014, an amount 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 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.
According to Richard Edet, general manager, Cisco Nigeria, “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.”
The forecast also projects the Middle East and Africa to have the strongest mobile data traffic growth of any region.
According to the report, IP traffic in the Middle East and Africa will reach 1 exabyte per month by 2014 at a rate of 45 percent. 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 percent.
For businesses in the Middle East and Africa, IP traffic will grow at a CAGR of 30 percent, a faster pace than the global average of 21 percent. North America, Western and Central Europe, and Japan will have slower growth rates. However, in volume, North America will have the largest amount of business IP traffic in 2014 at 2.3 exabytes per month. Western Europe will be a close second to North America at 2.2 exabytes per month.
The Cisco VNI Forecast also predicts that the growth in traffic will continue to be dominated by video, exceeding 91 percent 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.
“To help network users better understand global IP traffic growth drivers and trends, Cisco updated several of its unique resources. The VNI Forecast widget provides customized views of the growth of various network traffic types around the globe (revised for this 2009 – 2014 forecast period) and the VNI PC Pulse application for desktop and laptop computers which helps consumers learn more about their individual impact on IP networks and compare their network usage with that of others around the world” said Edet to acknowledge the difficulty in measuring ever evolving IP traffic figures.