Internet Traffic Will Explode By 2015: Report

Internet traffic is set to quadruple in the next four years.

According to Cisco's Visual Networking Index Report, growth in smartphones, tablets and other web-connected devices will drive up Internet traffic to 80.5 exabytes per month by 2015. To get a sense of what this means, researchers estimate that all printed material equals about 200 petabytes, which is equivalent to approximately one-fifth of a single exabyte. Some say an exabyte is equal to the data representing all words ever spoken. Back in 2004, global monthly web traffic passed 1 exabyte for the first time -- meaning in that 11-year span, it will have multiplied by a factor of over 80.

Forty percent of the global population will be online by 2015, creating a zettabyte of traffic in that year, the report states. A zettabyte equals 1,000 exabytes, and is a quantity of information so vast it's nearly impossible to visualize. A zettabyte is equal to one billion terabytes. One terabyte of audio equals about 2,000 hours of audio.

The researchers also stated that by the end of this year, there will be more networked devices than people on earth, and by 2015, there will be twice as many networked devices as there are people on earth.

By 2015, the world will be watching three trillion minutes of web video per month, according to Cisco's research. That amounts to one million minutes each second. Web video currently is 40 percent of Internet traffic and is predicted to hit 62 percent by 2015.

The study also forecasts that Asia will displace North America by 2015 as the region generating the most web traffic. Asia will generate 24.1 exabytes per month to North America's 22.3 exabytes per month, Cisco estimates. By country, Canada, France, Britain, and South Korea will all also consume more data per person than America.

The study also demonstrated the coming decline of the personal computer: By 2015, only 87 percent of web traffic will derive from PCs, compared to 97 percent last year. What's more, mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold by 2015, coming to represent 8 percent of all traffic. By the same year, wireless traffic will overtake wired traffic, with Wi-Fi and mobile devices coming to account for 54 percent on traffic to wired traffic's 46. In 2010, wired devices made up 63 percent of traffic.

Cisco also notes that the rise of the cloud is a crucial trend to keep an eye on, especially in gaming. Though online gaming is only 0.03 percent of traffic today, Cisco predicts that it could become one of the biggest traffic generators should cloud gaming become even more popular.

Comments

[abuckley23]

04:58 PM on 06/01/2011

Exabyte? Pedabyte? Come on, now they're just making up words. In celebration of Shaq's retirement the next one up should be a Shaqabyte! Because that dude is huge!

[David Landry]

02:31 PM on 06/01/2011

Not to worry, most ISP have lots of bandwidth to handle this quadrupling of traffic already. Just last week, Shaw Cable, a major Canadian ISP announced they were upping their bandwidth speeds and limits from something like 20Gbs with a 60GB/mth limit to something like 250Mbs with between 1000GB-unlimitedGB/mth (not sure if the exact numbers, but the increase was in the 10 fold range)

All this with existing infrastructure.

The major Canadian ISP have been arguing for a couple of years now that they needed to implement strict Use Base Billing (UBB) to preserve bandwidth and make the "heavy users" pay for what they used ... there was a big basklash in Canada against this, even the conservative federal government weighed in on the side of the consumer.

Shaw was the first one to "fold" and decide that instead of trying to gouge their user base with a dishonest UBB policy they would instead start trying to build a business the old fashion way, by being honest and providing the customer a service whose charges are more in line with the actual cost of delivering the service (ie: a reasonable service at a reasonable price.)

If Shaw is any indication, ISPs in general can easily handle a 10 fold increase in traffic almost immediately, so handling a 4 fold increase in 4 years should be child's play ... if they are doing business honestly.

[becky bradshaw]

04:44 PM on 06/01/2011

Shaw Cable is probably not representative of most situations. Often the challenge is the "last mile" of infrastructure. But much of the Internet traffic growth will take place in India, China, and other developing countries.

There is a known link between a society's wealth and its Internet traffic. It would be logical to assume that North America and Western Europe will see a large drop in Internet traffic over the next 10 years.

[PaulMuaddib]

12:09 PM on 06/01/2011

Are all those people driving away from the Internet traffic?

[J0E1]

11:39 AM on 06/01/2011

Really? I would have thought internet traffic would slow down by 2015...