The “Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Complete Forecast for 2015 to 2020” was released today and the research has global IP traffic nearly tripling at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22 percent.
More than one billion new internet users are expected to join the global internet community, growing from 3 billion in 2015 to 4.1 billion by 2020, according to the research. Over those five years, global IP networks will support up to 10 billion new devices and connections, increasing from 16.3 billion in 2015 to 26.3 billion by 2020, according to the research. There are projected to be 3.4 devices and connections per capita by 2020 — up from 2.2 per capita in 2015.
Probably not a surprise to anyone paying attention to the space, but the Internet of Things (IoT) is reportedly going to be a major driver of IP traffic. Video surveillance, smart meters, digital health monitors and other M2M services are said to be creating new network requirements and incremental traffic increases. Globally, M2M connections are calculated to grow nearly three-fold from 4.9 billion in 2015 to 12.2 billion by 2020, representing nearly half (46 percent) of total connected devices.
According to the report, the connected health consumer segment will have the fastest growth (five-fold) of M2M connections from 2015 (144 million) to 2020 (729 million). The connected home segment will have the largest volume of M2M connections over the forecast period with 2.4 billion in 2015, growing to 5.8 billion by 2020 — nearly half of all M2M connections.
The research shows video services and content continue to be the dominant leader compared with all other applications. Internet video will account for 79 percent of global Internet traffic by 2020 — up from 63 percent in 2015, it says. The world will reach 3 trillion internet video minutes per month by 2020, which is five million years of video per month, or about one million video minutes every second, Cisco says. HD and Ultra HD Internet video will make up 82 percent of Internet video traffic by 2020 — up from 53 percent in 2015.
On the security front, Cisco collaborated with Arbor Networks to help quantify the current and future threats of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. That DDoS analysis suggests that these types of breaches can represent up to 10 percent of a country’s total internet traffic while they are occurring. The research suggests that over the next five years, DDoS attacks are projected to increase from 6.6 million to 17 million attacks.
Global IP traffic is reportedly expected to reach 194.4 exabytes per month by 2020, up from 72.5 exabytes per month in 2015. The global annual run rate will reach 2.3 zettabytes by 2020 — up from 870 exabytes in 2015, the report says.
