Internet traffic

Highlights of Cisco's forecast include the following:

Global IP traffic will increase by a factor of five from 2008 to 2013, approaching 56 exabytes per month in 2013, compared to approximately 9 exabytes per month in 2008.

By 2013, annual global IP traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyte (673 exabytes). A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.

By 2013, the various forms of video (TV, VoD, Internet Video, and P2P) will exceed 90 percent of global consumer traffic.

By 2013, global online video will be 60 percent of consumer Internet traffic (up from 32 percent in 2009).

Mobile data traffic will roughly double each year from 2008 through 2013.

Amount of traffic

Cisco, a major network systems company, published the following history and forecast for global IP traffic in February, 2010:

Year Data (PB/month)

1994 0.02

1995 0.22

1996 2.28

1997 6.34

1998 14.21

1999 32.35

2000 95.45

2001 222.02

2002 451.58

2003 863.88

2004 1,606.82

2005 2,606.26

2006 4,235.16

2007 6,619.56

2008 10,306.66

2009 14,748.83

2010 21,380.09

2011 30,864.50

2012 42,238.62

2013 55,537.74

The following table shows the amount of backbone traffic in the United States:

Year Data (TB/month)

1990 1

1991 2

1992 4

1993 8

1994 16

1995 NA

1996 1,500

1997 2,500–4,000

1998 5,000–8,000

1999 10,000–16,000

2000 20,000–35,000

2001 40,000–70,000

2002 80,000–140,000

2003 NA

2004 NA

2005 NA

2006 450,000–800,000

2007 750,000–1,250,000

2008 1,200,000–1,800,000

2009 1,900,000–2,400,000