Cisco: Internet Will Quadruple In Four Years Time By 2016, Its Zettabytes Era

Posted on May 30 2012 - 3:09pm by Editorial Staff

A new study conducted by Cisco revealed that the annual global IP traffic will surpass the zettabyte threshold (1.3 zettabytes) by the end of 2016. In 2016, global IP traffic will reach 1.3 zettabytes per year or 109.5 exabytes per month. The company mentioned it as Zettabytes era. Global IP traffic has increased eightfold over the past 5 years, and will increase threefold over the next 5 years. Overall, IP traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29 percent from 2011 to 2016.

In 2016, the gigabyte equivalent of all movies ever made will cross global IP networks every 3 minutes. Global IP networks will deliver 12.5 petabytes every 5 minutes in 2016. The number of devices connected to IP networks will be nearly three times as high as the global population in 2016. There will be nearly three networked devices per capita in 2016, up from over one networked device per capita in 2011. Driven in part by the increase in devices and the capabilities of those devices, IP traffic per capita will reach 15 gigabytes per capita in 2016, up from 4 gigabytes per capita in 2011.

A growing amount of IP and Internet traffic is originating with non-PC devices. By 2016 the non-PC share of IP traffic will grow to 31 percent, but in 2011, 22 percent of IP traffic originated with non-PC devices. In 2011, only 6 percent of consumer Internet traffic originated with non-PC devices, but by 2016 the non-PC share of consumer Internet traffic will grow to 19 percent. PC-originated traffic will grow at a CAGR of 26 percent, while TVs, tablets, smartphones, and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules will have growth rates of 77 percent, 129 percent, 119 percent, and 86 percent, respectively.

Traffic from wireless devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2016. In 2016, wired devices will account for 39 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 61 percent of IP traffic. In 2011, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 55 percent. Busy-hour traffic is growing more rapidly than average traffic. Busy-hour Internet traffic will increase nearly fivefold by 2016, while average traffic will increase nearly fourfold. Busy-hour Internet traffic will reach 720 Tbps in 2016, the equivalent of 600 million people streaming Internet high-definition video simultaneously.

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