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Today networks are an essential part of business, education, government, and home communications. Many consumer and business IP networking trends are being driven largely by video and social networking and collaboration (i.e., Web 2.0 technologies), which combined are termed “visual networking.”

The Cisco Visual Network Index (VNI) is the company’s ongoing effort to forecast the growth and use of IP networking worldwide. It is based on Cisco analysis and independent analysts’ forecasts.

Highlights from the current Cisco VNI 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 sum of all 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.