International. Cisco recently revealed the projections of its annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast, which puts the magnifying glass on the period 2011-2016. This study aims to analyze and forecast the growth of IP networks and their trends around the world. According to this in 2016 the annual global IP traffic will be 1.3 zettabytes (one zettabyte equals one thousand trillion bytes, or one trillion gigabytes).
The goal of the annual Cisco VNI forecast is to project the growth of global IP traffic and its trends. This report is based on comprehensive analysis and modelling from traffic, usage and device data provided by independent analysts. Cisco validates forecasts, inputs, and methodology with data on actual traffic voluntarily provided by service providers and more than one million consumers worldwide.
This year, Cisco also developed a companion study, the Cisco VNI Service Adoption Forecast, which includes global and regional data on the growth of residential services, consumer mobile services, and enterprise services. According to these calculations, by 2016 the world's annual IP traffic will be 1.3 zettabytes (one zettabyte equals one thousand trillion bytes, or one trillion gigabytes).
The projected increase in global IP traffic between 2015 and 2016 alone is more than 330 exabytes, almost equivalent to the total global IP traffic generated in 2011 (369 exabytes). This marked growth in traffic and the expansion of the service can be explained by several factors: Increase in the number of devices, more internet users, higher broadband speed, more video, growth of Wi-Fi.
It is believed that in 2016, the Asia Pacific region will generate the most IP traffic (40.5 exabytes per month), which would remain above North America (27.5 exabytes per month), which ranks second in terms of amount of traffic.
The regions with the highest IP traffic growth rate for the period analyzed (2011–2016) are the Middle East and Africa (Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 58%, ten times higher) and Latin America (CAGR of 49%, seven times higher).
As for countries, it is estimated that India will have the highest IP traffic growth rate, with a CAGR of 62% between 2011 and 2016. In second place are Brazil and South Africa, both with a CAGR of 53% during the period analyzed.
According to the index's forecast, by 2016 the countries that will generate the most traffic will be the United States (22 exabytes per month) and China (12 exabytes per month).
Global growth in Internet users is projected, from 1600 million in 2011 to 2300 million in 2016. In addition, desktop video conferencing is expected to be the fastest growing service between 2011 and 2016, rising from 36.4 million users to 218.9 million.
