IP network giant Cisco estimates that the use of video over global consumer IP networks will grow from 22 percent in 2007 to nearly 90 percent of all consumer IP traffic by 2012.
The company’s Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast for 2007-2012 predicts that IP traffic will increase at a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent between 2007 and 2012, resulting in an annual bandwidth demand on the world’s IP networks of approximately 522 exabytes(2) or more than half a zettabyte.
Rich online video communications and entertainment, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have greatly—and will continue to—increase the impact of video on the network, Cisco said. Internet video jumped from 12 percent of global consumer Internet traffic in 2006 to 22 percent in 2007 and by 2012, Internet video traffic alone will be 400 times the traffic carried by the U.S. Internet backbone in 2000. Video on Demand, IPTV, peer to peer (P2P) video and Internet video are forecast to account for nearly 90 percent of all consumer IP traffic in 2012.
Global business IP traffic is forecast to grow strongly at a CAGR of 35 percent from 2007 to 2012, driven by increased broadband penetration in the small business segment and the increased adoption of advance video communications (i.e., videoconferencing). Business IP traffic will grow fastest in the developing markets and the Asia-Pacific region. North America will continue to have the most business IP traffic through 2012, followed by Asia-Pacific and Western Europe.
Cisco’s report also notes that, by December 2012, monthly global IP traffic will be 11 exabytes higher than in December 2011, a single year increase that will exceed the amount by which traffic has increased in the eight years since 2000. In addition, mobile data traffic will roughly double each year from 2008 through 2012.
“The broad and increasing adoption of visual networking is having a significant impact on IP traffic growth for both consumer and business services markets worldwide,” said Suraj Shetty, vice president of service provider marketing for Cisco. “Until just a few years ago, ‘exabyte’ was an unheard-of term. However, because of the massive growth we’re seeing, by 2012 we will have to reorient our vocabulary once again, as the metric that we need then will be the zettabyte.”
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