SAN JOSE, Calif – IP traffic will increase at a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46% from 2007 to 2012, nearly doubling every two years, and will result in annual bandwidth demand on the world’s IP networks of about half a zettabyte, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast for 2007-2012.
A zettabyte is equal to 1 trillion gigabytes, 1,000 exabytes or 250 billion DVDs.
The VNI report, released Monday, provides key findings on a variety of consumer and business Internet Protocol (IP) networking trends driven largely by the increasing use of video and Web 2.0 social networking and collaboration applications. These technologies represent what the VNI refers to as visual networking.
In the consumer market, the advent of rich online video communications and entertainment, along with social networking, has upped the impact of online video on the network. In 2012, Internet video traffic alone will be 400 times the traffic carried by the U.S. Internet backbone in 2000, predicts the VNI report. It also notes that Internet video has increased from 12% of the global consumer Internet traffic in 2006 to 22% in 2007.
Video-on-demand, IPTV, peer-to-peer (P2P) video, and Internet video are forecast to account for nearly 90% of all consumer IP traffic in 2012.
Global business IP traffic is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 35% from 2007 to 2012.
Increased broadband penetration in the small-business segment and the increased adoption of advanced video communications in the enterprise are major drivers for business IP traffic growth.
Business IP traffic will grow fastest in the developing markets and Asia-Pacific, predicts the report. In volume, North America will continue to have the most business IP traffic through 2012, followed by Asia-Pacific and Western Europe.
“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.
