Cisco Global IP Traffic Forecast

According to today’s release of the Cisco Visual Networking Index™ (VNI) Complete Forecast for 2015 to 2020, global IP traffic will nearly triple at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22 percent over the next five years. More than one billion new Internet users are expected to join the global Internet community, growing from three billion in 2015 to 4.1 billion by 2020. The global digitization transformation, based on the adoption of personal devices and deployment of machine-to-machine (M2M) connections will have an even greater impact on traffic growth. Over the next 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. There are projected to be 3.4 devices and connections per capita by 2020 — up from 2.2 per capita in 2015.

Key Findings & Milestones from Global Traffic Projections and Service Adoption Trends

1.) Stable growth in IP and Internet Traffic

• Global IP traffic is 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.
  • 2.3 zettabytes is equivalent to 12 hours of streaming music per day of the year per capita or 33 hours of Ultra HD video streaming for each person on earth.
• Busy-hour Internet traffic is increasing faster than average Internet traffic. Busy-hour Internet traffic will grow nearly 5-fold (4.7-fold) from 2015 to 2020, reaching 2.6 Pbps by 2020, compared with average Internet traffic that will grow three-fold over the same period reaching.
  • Across all time zones, “Internet primetime” generally occurs between 9 p.m. and midnight.

Regional IP Traffic Growth Details

• APAC: 67.8 exabytes/month by 2020, 22 percent CAGR, three-fold growth
• North America: 59.1 exabytes/month by 2020, 19 percent CAGR, two-fold growth
• Western Europe: 28.0 exabytes/month by 2020, 20 percent CAGR, two-fold growth
• Central Europe: 17.0 exabytes/month by 2020, 27 percent CAGR, three-fold growth
• Latin America: 11.6 exabytes/month by 2020, 21 percent CAGR, two-fold growth
• Middle East and Africa: 10.9 exabytes/month by 2020, 41 percent CAGR, six-fold growth

2.) IPv6 Adoption Supports Global Digitization

• Globally, 48.2 percent of all fixed and mobile networked devices and connections will be IPv6-capable by 2020 — up from 23.3 percent in 2015.
• Globally, 34 percent of total Internet traffic will be IPv6 driven by 2020. Globally, IPv6 traffic will grow 16-fold from 2015 to 2020, a CAGR of 74 percent.

3.) Fixed Broadband Speeds Nearly Double

• Global broadband speeds will nearly double from 24.7 Mbps in 2015 to 47.7 Mbps by 2020.

4.) Smartphone Traffic Will Surpass PC Traffic

• The way consumers and business users access IP networks and the Internet is shifting from PCs to mobile devices. By 2020, 71 percent of total IP traffic will originate with non-PC devices including tablets, smartphones, and televisions, compared to 47 percent in 2015.
• By 2020, smartphones will generate 30 percent of total IP traffic, while PC’s total IP traffic contribution will fall to 29 percent.

5.) Video Continues to Dominate Internet Traffic (with New Emerging Trends)

• Internet video will increase four-fold between 2015 and 2020.
• Consumer Internet video traffic will be 82 percent of consumer Internet traffic by 2020 — up from 68 percent in 2015.
• Business Internet video traffic will be 66 percent of business Internet traffic by 2020 — up from 44 percent in 2015.
• Video surveillance traffic nearly doubled in the past year and will grow 10-fold by 2020.
• Virtual reality traffic quadrupled in the past year and will increase 61-fold by 2020.

6.) Service Adoption Trends: Residential, Consumer Mobile and Business

• Online gaming will be the fastest growing residential Internet service, growing from 1.1 billion users in 2015 to 1.4 billion users by 2020.
• Mobile location-based service (LBS) will be the fastest growing consumer mobile service, growing from 807 million users in 2015 to over 2.3 billion users by 2020.
• Desktop /personal videoconferencing will be the fastest growing business Internet service, growing from 95 million users in 2015 to 248 million users by 2020.

7.) Global Wi-Fi Expansion

• Globally, total public Wi-Fi hotspots including home spots will grow 7X from 2015 (64 million) to 2020 (432 million).
• Globally, home spots will grow from 57 million (2015) to 423 million by 2020.
• Expanded Wi-Fi access will enable a variety of scaling and optimization opportunities for network operators (more mobile offload, ubiquitous VoWiFi, smart cities, connected transportation and related IoT strategies). This trend also enhances quad play capabilities and provides additional access for TV everywhere services.

8.) Consumer and Business Users Prefer Mobile Over Fixed Networks

• In 2015, Wi-Fi and mobile-connected devices generated 62 percent of Internet traffic (Wi-Fi: 55 percent; cellular: 7 percent; fixed: 38 percent). By 2020, Wi-Fi and mobile-connected devices will generate 78 percent of Internet traffic (Wi-Fi: 59 percent; cellular: 19 percent; fixed: 22 percent).

Global IP Traffic Growth, 2015–2020

Table 1 shows the top-line forecast. According to this forecast, global IP traffic in 2015 stands at 72.5 EB per month and will nearly triple by 2020, to reach 194.4 EB per month. Consumer IP traffic will reach 162.2 EB per month and business IP traffic will surpass 32.2 EB per month by 2020.

Table 1.       Global IP Traffic, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Definitions

●   Consumer: Includes fixed IP traffic generated by households, university populations, and Internet cafés

●   Business: Includes fixed IP WAN or Internet traffic generated by businesses and governments

●   Mobile: Includes mobile data and Internet traffic generated by handsets, notebook cards, and mobile broadband gateways

●   Internet: Denotes all IP traffic that crosses an Internet backbone

●   Managed IP: Includes corporate IP WAN traffic and IP transport of TV and VoD

The following tables show cross-tabulations of end-user segment and network type for the final year of the forecast period (2020). Consumer Internet remains the primary generator of IP traffic, but mobile data has the highest growth rate and begins to generate significant traffic by 2020 (Table 2).

Table 2.       Exabytes per Month as of Year End 2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Table 3 shows the same data as Table 2, but in terms of annual traffic run rates. These run rates are based on the monthly traffic at the end of 2020.

Table 3.       Exabytes per Year as of Year End 2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Consumer and business traffic are both dominated by Internet traffic, although business traffic is more evenly distributed across public Internet and managed IP (Table 4).

Table 4.       Traffic Share by End-User Segment as of Year End 2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Consumer traffic accounts for the majority of IP traffic in every network type segment. Consumer traffic will be 82 percent of all fixed Internet traffic, 87 percent of all of managed IP traffic, and 85 percent of all mobile data traffic (Table 5).

Table 5.       Traffic Share by Network Type as of Year End 2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Consumer Internet traffic will represent more than half of all IP traffic, followed by consumer-managed IP (VoD), which represents 15 percent of traffic (Table 6).

Table 6.       Overall Traffic Share as of Year End 2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Consumer IP Traffic, 2015–2020

As shown in Table 7, global consumer IP traffic is expected to reach 162 EB per month in 2020. Most of today’s consumer IP traffic is Internet traffic.

Table 7.       Global Consumer IP Traffic, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Consumer Internet Traffic, 2015–2020

This category encompasses any IP traffic that crosses the Internet and is not confined to a single service provider’s network. Internet video streaming and downloads are beginning to take a larger share of bandwidth and will grow to more than 80 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2020 (Table 8).

Table 8.       Global Consumer Internet Traffic, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Definitions

●   Web, email, and data: Includes web, email, instant messaging, and other data traffic (excludes file sharing)

●   File sharing: Includes peer-to-peer traffic from all recognized peer-to-peer (P2P) systems such as BitTorrent and eDonkey, as well as traffic from web-based file-sharing systems

●   Gaming: Includes casual online gaming, networked console gaming, and multiplayer virtual-world gaming

●   Internet video: Includes short-form Internet video (for example, YouTube), long-form Internet video (for example, Hulu), live Internet video, Internet video to TV (for example, Netflix through Roku), online video purchases and rentals, webcam viewing, and web-based video monitoring (excludes P2P video file downloads)

Web, Email, and Data

This general category encompasses web browsing, email, instant messaging, data (which includes file transfer using HTTP and FTP), and other Internet applications (Table 9). Note that data may include the download of video files that are not captured by the Internet video-to-PC forecast. This category includes traffic generated by all individual Internet users. An Internet user is here defined as someone who accesses the Internet through a desktop or laptop computer at home, school, Internet café, or other location outside the context of a business.

Table 9.       Global Consumer Web, Email, and Data Traffic, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

File Sharing

This category includes traffic from P2P applications such as BitTorrent and eDonkey, as well as web-based file sharing. Note that a large portion of P2P traffic is due to the exchange of video files, so a total view of the impact of video on the network should count P2P video traffic in addition to the traffic counted in the Internet video-to-PC and Internet video-to-TV categories. Table 10 shows the forecast for consumer P2P traffic from 2015 to 2020. Note that the P2P category is limited to traditional file exchange and does not include commercial video-streaming applications that are delivered through P2P, such as PPStream or PPLive.

Table 10.     Global Consumer File-Sharing Traffic, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Internet Video

With the exception of the Internet video-to-TV subcategory, all of the Internet video subcategories consist of online video that is downloaded or streamed for viewing on a PC screen (Table 11). Internet video to TV is Internet delivery of video to a TV screen through a set-top box (STB) or equivalent device. Much of the video streamed or downloaded through the Internet consists of free clips, episodes, and other content offered by traditional content producers such as movie studios and television networks.

Table 11.     Global Consumer Internet Video, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Definitions

●   Internet video to TV: Video delivered through the Internet to a TV screen by way of an Internet-enabled set-top box (for example, Roku) or equivalent device (for example, Microsoft Xbox 360), Internet-enabled TV, or PC-to-TV connection

●   Video: Video includes the following underlying categories:

◦     Short form: User-generated video and other video clips generally less than 7 minutes in length

◦     Video calling: Video messages or calling delivered on fixed Internet initiated by smartphones, nonsmartphones, and tablets

◦     Long form: Video content generally greater than 7 minutes in length

◦     Live Internet TV: Peer-to-peer TV (excluding P2P video downloads) and live television streaming over the Internet

◦     Internet PVR: Recording of live TV content for later viewing

◦     Ambient video: Nannycams, petcams, home security cams, and other persistent video streams

◦     Mobile video: All video that travels over a second-, third-, or fourth-generation (2G, 3G, or 4G, respectively) network

Content Delivery Network Traffic, 2015–2020

With the emergence of popular video-streaming services that deliver Internet video to the TV and other device endpoints, CDNs have prevailed as a dominant method to deliver such content. Globally, 64 percent of all Internet traffic will cross CDNs by 2020, up from 45 percent in 2015. Globally, 73 percent of all Internet video traffic will cross CDNs by 2020, up from 61 percent in 2015 (Table 12).

Table 12.     Global Content Delivery Network Internet Traffic, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Consumer-Managed IP Traffic, 2015–2020

Managed IP video is IP traffic generated by traditional commercial TV services (Table 13). This traffic remains within the footprint of a single service provider, so it is not considered Internet traffic. (For Internet video delivered to the set-top box, refer to Internet video to TV in the section “Internet Video”.)

Table 13.     Global Consumer-Managed IP Traffic, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Business IP Traffic

The enterprise forecast is based on the number of network-connected computers worldwide. In our experience, this basis provides the most accurate measure of enterprise data usage. An average business user might generate 4 GB per month of Internet and WAN traffic. A large-enterprise user would generate significantly more traffic, 8–10 GB per month (Table 14).

Table 14.     Business IP Traffic, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

Definitions

●   Business Internet traffic: All business traffic that crosses the public Internet

●   Business IP traffic: All business traffic that is transported over IP but remains within the corporate WAN

●   Business mobile data traffic: All business traffic that crosses a mobile access point

Mobile Data Traffic

Mobile data traffic includes handset-based data traffic, such as text messaging, multimedia messaging, and handset video services (Table 15). Mobile Internet traffic is generated by wireless cards for portable computers and handset-based mobile Internet usage.

Table 15.     Mobile Data and Internet Traffic, 2015–2020

Source: Cisco VNI, 2016

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