Cisco: Video Will Drive Broadband Demand

Internet video will supplant peer-to-peer (P2P) networking and file sharing as the largest type of Internet traffic by year’s end according to Cisco System’s latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast.

Increasing consumer demand for applications like 3DTV, HD video, streaming gaming and live TV via the Internet will drive overall network broadband traffic up more than 400 percent 2009 and 2014, impressive but down a tad from Cisco’s original forecast of more than 500-percent growth.

As Enterprise Networking Planet discovered, roughly 46 percent of all consumer Internet traffic last year was dedicated to file sharing, with P2P specifically accounting for 39 percent of all Internet usage. And while P2P will continue to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 16 percent over the next five years, it will decline as a percentage of total traffic as video becomes the application of choice.

If Cisco’s forecast is on the money, video will account for more than 91 percent of global consumer IP traffic by 2014.


Internet traffic growth will continue to rise over the next five years, hitting a whopping 767 exabytes by 2014, according to the latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast from Cisco. While that total is staggering, that’s still slower than previous growth predictions.

The company is now forecasting that Internet traffic growth will grow fourfold between 2009 and 2014. However, Cisco’s (NASDAQ: CSCO) estimate in 2009 had previously predicted 500-percent global Internet traffic growth between 2008 and 2013.

“Percentage-wise, yes, the growth rate is tapering off a bit, though the volume increases continue to be impressive,” said Doug Webster, senior director of service provider marketing at Cisco.



Read the full story at Enterprise Networking Planet:


Global Networking Broadband Demand Starts to Slow

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