Mobile devices to drive majority internet traffic: Report

 

 How much data flows through the internet? It is difficult to estimate but according to Cisco's annual report annual global internet traffic will pass the zettabyte threshold by the end of 2015, and will reach 1.4 zettabytes per year by 2017. A zetta is one followed by twenty one zeroes.

Currently, about 43.6 exabytes (one followed by 18 zeroes) of data zips across the internet every month. This will increase by about 23 per cent in the next five years to reach 1.4 zettabytes per year or 120.6 exabytes per month by 2017.

In the previous five years, between 2007 and 2012, internet traffic grew fourfold. The latest report predicts that it will grow threefold in the next five years.

By 2017, wired devices will account for 45 per cent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 55 percent of IP traffic. In 2012, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 59 per cent, the report said.

There will be nearly three networked devices per capita in 2017, up from nearly two networked devices per capita in 2012. Accelerated in part by the increase in devices and the capabilities of those devices, IP traffic per capita will reach 16 gigabytes per capita by 2017, up from 6 gigabytes per capita in 2012.

Consumer internet traffic, which includes fixed traffic, generated by households, university populations, and internet cafes constitutes over 80 percent of the total internet traffic in 2012. The remaining is business internet traffic consisting of wide area networks (WAN) and business or government related traffic, the Cisco report said.

Nearly half of all IP traffic will originate with non-PC devices by 2017. In 2012, only 26 per cent of consumer internet traffic originated with non-PC devices, but by 2017 the non-PC share of consumer IP traffic will grow to 49 percent. PC-originated traffic will grow at an annual growth rate of 14 per cent, while TVs, tablets, mobile phones, and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules will have traffic growth rates of 24 per cent, 104 percent, 79 per cent, and 82 per cent, respectively.

Globally, IP video traffic will be 73 per cent of all IP traffic (both business and consumer) by 2017, up from 60 per cent in 2012. This percentage does not include the amount of video exchanged through peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand [VoD], Internet, and P2P) will continue to be in the range of 80 and 90 per cent of global consumer traffic by 2017, the report said.

Internet video to TV doubled in 2012. It will continue to grow at a rapid pace, increasing fivefold by 2017. Internet video to TV will be 14 percent of consumer Internet video traffic in 2017, up from 9 percent in 2012.

IP traffic is growing fastest in the Middle East and Africa, followed by Asia Pacific. Traffic in the Middle East and Africa will grow by 38 percent between 2012 and 2017 while in Asia Pacific it will increase by 26 percent.