Video to drive threefold increase in IP traffic

Annual Internet Protocol (IP) traffic will triple between 2014 and 2019, with video to account for 80% of global IP traffic by 2019, according to research by Cisco.

The firm’s tenth annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast claims that global IP traffic will reach 168 exabytes per month by 2019, up from 59.9 exabytes per month in 2014, after growing at a compound annual growth rate of 23%.

These gains will be driven by global increases in internet users, personal devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, as well as by faster broadband speeds, and the adoption of advanced video services, according to the forecast.

“It took 32 years – from 1984 to 2016 – to generate the first zettabyte of IP traffic annually. However, as this year’s Visual Networking Index forecasts, it will take only three additional years to reach the next zettabyte milestone when there will be more than 2 zettabytes of IP Traffic annually by 2019,” said Cisco’s vice president of service provider products and solutions marketing, Doug Webster.

IP video will account for 80 percent of all IP traffic by 2019, up from 67% in 2014, according to the study, thanks to the evolution of advanced services like Ultra High Definition and 360 degree, spherical video – as well as “increasingly video-centric M2M applications”.

“Residential, business and mobile consumers continue to have strong demand for advanced video services across all network and device types, making quality, convenience, content/experience and price key success factors,” said Cisco.

The VNI forecast predicts that there will be 24 billion networked devices/connections online by 2019, compared with 14 billion in 2014, due to an “influx” of sophisticated devices including tablets, smartphones, internet-enabled ultra-high definition TVs, and wearables like smart watches and health monitors.

“Globally, there will be 3.2 networked devices/connections per capita by 2019, up from 2 per capita in 2014,” said Cisco, which added that the average fixed broadband speed “will increase two-fold from 20.3 Mbps in 2014 to 42.5 Mbps in 2019.”

Cisoc predicts that by 2019, more than 14% of monthly global IP traffic will come from cellular connections, while 53% of monthly IP traffic will come from WiFi connections

Citing figures provided by the United Nations’ department of economic and social affairs, it added that there were 2.8 billion internet users, or 39% of the world’s population, in 2014, and by 2019, there will be about 3.9 billion web users, or 51% of the projected global population.