Cisco: Internet Traffic to Quadruple by 2015

Posted 06/01/2011 at 7:20am | by Paul Lilly

2

Comments

Print

If you think your daily commute to work is overcrowded, just wait until 2015 and try driving on the Internet's highways. By then, network traffic will have quadrupled to 966 exabytes per year as a content hungry populace gains access to cyberspace on more than 15 billion network connected devices that, ironically enough, will outnumber people 2 to 1. These are just some of the numbers Cisco tossed out in its fifth annual 'Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2010-2015)' released today.

Between 2014 and 2015 alone, Cisco predicts an increase of Internet traffic to the tune of 200 exabytes, a number greater than the total amount of Internet Protocol traffic generated globally in 2010. There will be 1 million minutes of video traversing cyberspace every every second (and three trillion video minutes every month) in 2015. By then, there will be nearly 3 billion Internet users -- more than 40 percent of the world's population -- according to Cisco.

"The explosive growth in Internet data traffic, especially video, creates an opportunity in the years ahead for optimizing and monetizing visual, virtual, and mobile Internet experiences," said Suraj Shetty, vice president of worldwide service provider marketing, Cisco. "As architect of the next-generation Internet, Cisco stands ready to help our customers not only accommodate this rapid expansion of Internet activity through the evolution of their networks but also help them thrive as a result of it."

While not addressed in Cisco's report, the numbers are further cause for concern for arbitrary data caps with overage fees. According to Cisco, the average fixed broadband speed in 2015 will reach 28Mbps, up from 7Mbps in 2010. What good will all that speed be if ISPs continue to clamp down on the amount of content users are able to consume every month?

Cisco's figures also bring to light the need for companies to hurry up and transition to IPv6. Each network connected device needs an iPv4 address, and those are in short supply.

"We are running out if IPv4 addresses and the adoption of IPv6 is going to be front and center of everything for the next several years," Shetty told BBC News. "The implication for vendors like Cisco is that we have to come up with a platform that can help scale the Internet to handle a lot of the traffic and to do it smartly. If you want to keep adding billions and billions of devices, the only answer is IPV6."