The Net: 4 times as large in 4yrs

  • Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast expects traffic in Asia Pacific to grow fourfold
  • 8 billion networked devices across the region by2016

BY 2016, annual global Internet Protocol (IP) traffic is forecast to be 1.3 zettabytes (a zettabyte is equal to a sextillion bytes, or a trillion gigabytes), nearly a fourfold increase from 2011, according to networking specialist Cisco.

Citing the results of the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2011-2016), the company’s ongoing initiative to forecast and analyze IP networking growth and trends worldwide, Cisco said the average global IP traffic in 2016 is expected to reach 150 petabytes per hour, the equivalent of 278 million people streaming an HD movie at an average streaming speed of 1.2Mbps simultaneously.

The VNI Forecast update covers 2011-2016, and quantitatively projects the significant amount of IP traffic expected to travel public and private networks, including Internet, managed IP, and mobile data traffic generated by consumers and business users, Cisco said in a statement.

This traffic growth and service penetration is being driven by a number of factors, including:

An increasing number of devices: The proliferation of tablets, mobile phones, and other smart devices as well as machine-to-machine (M2M) connections are driving up the demand for connectivity. By 2016, the forecast projects there will be nearly 18.9 billion network connections – almost 2.5 connections for each person on earth, compared with 10.3 billion in 2011.

More Internet users: By 2016, there are expected to be 3.4 billion Internet users – about 45% of the world's projected population according to United Nations estimates.

Faster broadband speeds: The average fixed broadband speed is expected to increase nearly fourfold, from 9 Mbps in 2011 to 34 Mbps in 2016.

More video: By 2016, 1.2 million video minutes would travel the Internet every second – that is equivalent of 833 days (or over two years).

Wi-Fi growth: By 2016, over half of the world’s Internet traffic is expected to come from Wi-Fi connections.
 
APAC to generate most traffic

By 2016, the Asia Pacific region is forecast to generate the most IP traffic (40.5 exabytes per month), maintaining the top spot over North America (27.5 exabytes per month), which generated the second most amount of traffic.

The region’s Internet traffic is expected to grow four-fold from 2011 to 2016 with a compound annual growth rate of 32%.

The average Internet traffic in Asia Pacific will reach 112 Tbps (terabytes per second) in 2016, which is the equivalent of over 93.7 million people streaming Internet HD video simultaneously. Internet video traffic is expected to contribute to 49% of all consumer Internet video traffic in 2016.

The Net: 4 times as large in 4yrsThe proliferation of connected devices in Asia Pacific is consistent with the global trends observed. There will be eight billion networked devices in 2016, up from four billion in 2011. In addition, there will be 1.9 networked devices per capita in 2016.

“Today, networks remain an essential part of business, education, government and home communications in Malaysia and the region,” said Yuri Wahab (pic), Cisco’s managing director for Malaysia.

“Many residential, enterprise, and mobile networking trends are being driven largely by a combination of video, social networking and advanced collaboration applications.

“Organizations need to have the right network infrastructure and technology in place to embrace the trends, create new services and increase productivity by capitalizing on various BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices), cloud and virtualization applications.

“It is also timely for the public and private sector to intensify initiatives around high-tech infrastructure development to support the endless appetite for bandwidth. This is crucial in raising our competitiveness and transforming the nation into a digital economy,” he said.

Globally, business Internet users are projected to grow from 1.6 billion in 2011 to 2.3 billion by 2016. Desktop videoconferencing is projected to be the fastest-growing service, with 36.4 million users in 2011, increasing to 218.9 million users in 2016.

Business mobile location-based services (LBS) are forecast to be the fastest-growing business mobile service, with 27 million users in 2011, increasing to 158 million users by 2016.
 
Related Stories:

Internet speeds: It’s not just about the infra, silly

Working on the next-gen Internet

Bandwidth throttling: It’s so last year
 

 
Keyword(s) :
 
Author Name :
 
Download Digerati50 2020-2021 PDF

Digerati50 2020-2021

Get and download a digital copy of Digerati50 2020-2021