Cisco Says Internet Traffic Will Triple in Next Four Years

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Cisco has released its annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast for 2012 to 2017, and the networking heavyweight is predicting rapid growth for the Web. It says the number of people online will increase dramatically and traffic will triple by 2017, thanks in large part to the “Internet of things.”

Jeffrey Burt with eWeek reported, “Internet traffic worldwide will grow three-fold by 2017, with non-PC devices like smartphones and tablets increasingly becoming the drivers of that traffic, according to a report by Cisco Systems. The networking giant’s annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast for 2012 to 2017 paints a picture of a rapidly growing Internet that will have more people with more devices creating more content—and more of that content being video—that will run over faster networks.”

According to Doug Woodburn with Channelnomics, “The Internet of Things, which refers to the networked connection of physical objects, is set for explosive growth, driven by M2M applications such as video surveillance, smart meters, asset/package tracking, chipped pets and livestock and digital health monitors, Cisco added. Annual M2M IP traffic is forecast to expand twentyfold over the period, from 197 petabytes last year to 3.9 exabytes in 2017, propelling its share of overall global IP traffic from 0.5 percent to three percent.”

Fred Donovan with FierceEnterprise Communications noted, “Business IP traffic is forecast to triple between 2012 and 2017, reaching 21.7 exabytes per month in 2017, predicts Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) in its latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) report…. Business Internet video traffic is expected to grow more than five-fold from 2012 to 2017, reaching 9.9 exabytes of traffic per month in 2017 from 1.9 exabytes per month in 2012.”

The Register’s Jack Clark added, “By 2017, around 3.6bn people will be online, Cisco says, representing 48 percent of the world’s projected population. This is up from the 32 per cent (2.3 billion) currently, and slightly higher than the 3.4bn Cisco has predicted for 2016.”