White Paper
Cisco Visual Networking Index:
Forecast and Methodology, 2015–2020
June 6, 2016
This forecast is part of the Cisco Visual Networking Index (Cisco VNI), an
ongoing initiative to track and forecast the impact of visual networking applications.
This document presents the details of the Cisco VNI global IP traffic forecast and
the methodology behind it. For a more analytical look at the implications of the data
presented in this paper, refer to the companion document, The Zettabyte Era—Trends
and Analysis, or the VNI Forecast Highlights tool.
Executive Summary
Annual global IP traffic will surpass the zettabyte (ZB; 1000 exabytes [EB]) threshold in 2016, and will
reach 2.3 ZB by 2020. Global IP traffic will reach 1.1 ZB per year or 88.7 EB (one billion gigabytes [GB])
per month in 2016. By 2020, global IP traffic will reach 2.3 ZB per year, or 194 EB per month.
Global IP traffic will increase nearly threefold over the next 5 years, and will have increased nearly 100-fold
from 2005 to 2020. Overall, IP traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22 percent from
2015 to 2020.
Busy-hour Internet traffic is growing more rapidly than average Internet traffic. Busy-hour (or the busiest
60-minute period in a day) Internet traffic increased 51 percent in 2015, compared with 29-percent growth in
average traffic. Busy-hour Internet traffic will increase by a factor of 4.6 between 2015 and 2020, while average
Internet traffic will increase twofold.
Smartphone traffic will exceed PC traffic by 2020. In 2015, PCs accounted for 53 percent of total IP traffic, but
by 2020 PCs will account for only 29 percent of traffic. Smartphones will account for 30 percent of total IP traffic
in 2020, up from 8 percent in 2015. PC-originated traffic will grow at a CAGR of 8 percent, while TVs, tablets,
smartphones, and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules will have traffic growth rates of 17 percent, 39 percent,
58 percent, and 44 percent, respectively.
Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will account for two-thirds of total IP traffic by 2020. By 2020,
wired devices will account for 34 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 66 percent
of IP traffic. In 2015, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 52 percent.
Global Internet traffic in 2020 will be equivalent to 95 times the volume of the entire global Internet in 2005.
Globally, Internet traffic will reach 21 GB per capita by 2020, up from 7 GB per capita in 2015.
The number of devices connected to IP networks will be three times as high as the global population in
2020. There will be 3.4 networked devices per capita by 2020, up from 2.2 networked devices per capita in 2015.
Accelerated in part by the increase in devices and the capabilities of those devices, IP traffic per capita will reach
25 GB per capita by 2020, up from 10 GB per capita in 2015.
Broadband speeds will nearly double by 2020. By 2020, global fixed broadband speeds will reach 47.7 Mbps,
up from 24.7 Mbps in 2015.
Video Highlights
It would take an individual more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global
IP networks each month in 2020. Every second, nearly a million minutes of video content will cross the network
by 2020.
Globally, IP video traffic will be 82 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2020, up from 70 percent in
2015. Global IP video traffic will grow threefold from 2015 to 2020, a CAGR of 26 percent. Internet video traffic will
grow fourfold from 2015 to 2020, a CAGR of 31 percent.
Internet video surveillance traffic nearly doubled in 2015, from 272 petabytes (PB) per month at the end of
2014 to 516 PB per month in 2015. Internet video surveillance traffic will increase tenfold between 2015 and 2020.
Globally, 3.9 percent of all Internet video traffic will be due to video surveillance in 2020, up from 1.5 percent
in 2015.
Virtual reality traffic quadrupled in 2015, from 4.2 PB per month in 2014 to 17.9 PB per month in 2015. Globally,
virtual reality traffic will increase 61-fold between 2015 and 2020, a CAGR of 127 percent.
Internet video to TV grew 50 percent in 2015. Internet video to TV will continue to grow at a rapid pace,
increasing 3.6-fold by 2020. Internet video-to-TV traffic will be 26 percent of consumer Internet video traffic by
2020, up from 24 percent in 2015.
Consumer VoD traffic will nearly double by 2020. Ultra-high-definition (UHD) will be 20.7 percent of IP video-on-
demand (VoD) traffic in 2020, up from 1.6 percent in 2015.
Content delivery network (CDN) traffic will carry nearly two-thirds of all internet video traffic by 2020.
By 2020, 64 percent of all Internet video traffic will cross CDNs, up from 45 percent in 2015.
Mobile Highlights
Globally, mobile data traffic will increase eightfold between 2015 and 2020. Mobile data traffic will grow at
a CAGR of 53 percent between 2015 and 2020, reaching 30.6 EB per month by 2020.
Global mobile data traffic will grow three times as fast as fixed IP traffic from 2015 to 2020. Global mobile
data traffic was 5 percent of total IP traffic in 2015, and will be 16 percent of total IP traffic by 2020.
Regional Highlights
IP traffic is growing fastest in the Middle East and Africa, followed by Asia Pacific. Traffic in the Middle East
and Africa will grow at a CAGR of 41 percent between 2015 and 2020.
IP traffic in North America will reach 59.1 EB per month by 2020, at a CAGR of 19 percent. Monthly Internet
traffic in North America will generate 11 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 44.7 EB per month.
IP traffic in Western Europe will reach 28.0 EB per month by 2020, at a CAGR of 20 percent. Monthly Internet
traffic in Western Europe will generate 6 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 24.1 EB per month.
IP traffic in Asia Pacific will reach 67.8 EB per month by 2020, at a CAGR of 22 percent. Monthly Internet
traffic in Asia Pacific will generate 14 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 56.4 EB per month.
IP traffic in Latin America will reach 11.6 EB per month by 2020, at a CAGR of 21 percent. Monthly Internet
traffic in Latin America will generate 2 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 9.9 EB per month.
IP traffic in Central and Eastern Europe will reach 17.0 EB per month by 2020, at a CAGR of 27 percent.
Monthly Internet traffic in Central and Eastern Europe will generate 4 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 15.9 EB
per month.
IP traffic in the Middle East and Africa will reach 10.9 EB per month by 2020, at a CAGR of 27 percent.
Monthly Internet traffic in the Middle East and Africa will generate 3 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 10.3 EB
per month.
Global Business Highlights
Business IP traffic will grow at a CAGR of 18 percent from 2015 to 2020. Increased adoption of advanced
video communications in the enterprise segment will cause business IP traffic to grow by a factor of 2 between
2015 and 2020.
Business Internet traffic will grow at a faster pace than IP WAN. IP WAN will grow at a CAGR of 6 percent,
compared with a CAGR of 21 percent for fixed business Internet and 47 percent for mobile business Internet.
Business IP traffic will grow fastest in the Middle East and Africa. Business IP traffic in the Middle East and
Africa will grow at a CAGR of 21 percent, a faster pace than the global average of 18 percent. In volume, Asia
Pacific will have the largest amount of business IP traffic in 2020, at 11.4 EB per month. North America will be
the second at 9.1 EB per month.
。。。以上简介无排版格式，详细内容请下载查看