It's time to talk zettabytes.
Cisco Systems on Wednesday released the sixth edition of its annual Visual Networking Index project, a look ahead at expected growth in network demand through 2016.
The company sees annual Net traffic by 2016 reaching 1.3 zettabytes - that's 1-with-21-zeros bytes, 10x more than all the data generated as recently as 2008, the equivalent of 38 million DVDs per hour. Cisco sees traffic jumping about 350 exabytes in 2016 from a projected 966 exabytes in 2015 - an increase that is close to total overall Internet traffic in 2011.
The company expects traffic in 2016 to be 4x the level seen in 2011.
Cisco sees four major drivers for the huge growth:
- More devices: the company sees 19 billion connected things by 2016.
- Faster broadband: Cisco sees average broadband speeds increasing 4x.
- More users: An estimated 3.4 billion by 2016, or about 45% of the projected population of the planet.
- More rich media content: Cisco sees users downloading video in 2016 at the rate of 1.2 million video minutes per second.
The company sees residential connected devices growing 17.3% a year compounded to 5.4 billion by 2016, with 8.3% annual growth in consumer mobile devices to 8.4 billion, and 18% annual growth in connected business devices to 5.1 billion.
One of the most startling forecasts is the rapid expected growth in Internet users outside the U.S. Here is Cisco's forecast for the Internet user population in 2016 by geography:
- North America, 269 million, annual growth rate, 1.6%.
- Western Europe, 319 million, CAGR, 2.5%.
- Central/Eastern Europe, 197 million, CAGR, 7.7%.
- Latin America, 287 million, CAGR, 11.0%.
- Middle East and Africa, 542 million, CAGR 16.1%.
- Asia Pacific, 1.7 billion, CAGR 13.2%.
Cisco also sees rapid increases in broadband speeds in developing markets bringing the close in capability to Western markets:
- North America, to 37 Mbps, from 11 Mbps.
- Western Europe, to 42 Mbps, from 11 Mbps.
- Central/Eastern Europe, to 29 Mbps, from 10 Mbps.
- Latin America, 287 million, to 12 Mbs, from 4 Mbps.
- Middle East and Africa, to 8.4 Mbps, from 3.4 Mbps.
- Asia Pacific, 1.7 billion, to 36 Mbps, from 8.1 Mbps.
With the additional bandwidth, Cisco expects huge growth in data consumption by 2016, with growth up 3x in North America and Western Europe, 4x in Asia Pacific, 5x in Central and Eastern Europe, 7x in Latin America and 10x in Middle East and Africa.
