This forecast is part of the Cisco® Visual Networking Index, an ongoing initiative to track and forecast the impact of visual networking applications. The purpose of this paper is to lay out the details of Cisco's global IP traffic forecast and the methodology behind it. For a more analytical look at the implications of the data presented below, please refer to the companion article to this paper entitled "Hyperconnectivity and the Approaching Zettabyte Era."
June 9, 2009
Executive Summary
Annual global IP traffic will exceed two-thirds of a zettabyte (667 exabytes) in four years. Last year's forecast anticipated a run rate of 522 exabytes per year in 2012. The economic downturn has only slightly tempered traffic growth, and this year's forecast predicts 510 exabytes per year in 2012, growing to 667 exabytes per year or 56 exabytes per month in 2013.
Global IP traffic will quintuple from 2008 to 2013. Overall, IP traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40 percent.
Global Internet Highlights
In 2013, the Internet will be nearly four times larger than it is in 2009. By year-end 2013, the equivalent of 10 billion DVDs will cross the Internet each month.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is growing in volume, but declining as a percentage of overall IP traffic. P2P file-sharing networks are now carrying 3.3 exabytes per month and will continue to grow at a moderate pace with a CAGR of 18 percent from 2008 to 2013. Other means of file sharing, such as one-click file hosting, will grow rapidly at a CAGR of 58 percent and will reach 3.2 exabytes per month in 2013. Despite this growth, P2P as a percentage of consumer Internet traffic will drop to 20 percent of consumer Internet traffic by 2013, down from 50 percent at the end of 2008.
Global Video Highlights
Internet video is now approximately one-third of all consumer Internet traffic, not including the amount of video exchanged through P2P file sharing.
The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand, Internet, and P2P) will account for over 91 percent of global consumer traffic by 2013. Internet video alone will account for over 60 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2013.
In 2013, Internet video will be nearly 700 times the U.S. Internet backbone in 2000. It would take well over half a million years to watch all the online video that will cross the network each month in 2013. Internet video will generate over 18 exabytes per month in 2013.
Video communications traffic growth is accelerating. Though still a small fraction of overall Internet traffic, video over instant messaging and video calling are experiencing high growth. Video communications traffic will increase tenfold from 2008 to 2013.
Real-time video is growing in importance. By 2013, Internet TV will be over 4 percent of consumer Internet traffic, and ambient video will be 8 percent of consumer Internet traffic. Live TV has gained substantial ground in the past few years: globally, P2P TV is now slightly over 7 percent of overall P2P traffic at over 200 petabytes per month.
Video-on-demand (VoD) traffic will double every two years through 2013. Consumer IPTV and CATV traffic will grow at a 53 percent CAGR between 2008 and 2013, compared to a CAGR of 40 percent for consumer Internet traffic.
Global Mobile Highlights
Globally, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2013, increasing 66x between 2008 and 2013. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching over 2 exabytes per month by 2013.
Almost 64 percent of the world's mobile data traffic will be video by 2013. Mobile video will grow at a CAGR of 150 percent between 2008 and 2013.
Mobile broadband handsets with higher than 3G speeds and laptop aircards will drive over 80 percent of global mobile traffic by 2013. A single high-end phone (such as an iPhone or Blackberry) generates more data traffic than 30 basic-feature cell phones. A laptop aircard generates more data traffic than 450 basic-feature cell phones.
Regional Highlights
IP traffic is growing fastest in the Middle East and Africa, followed closely by Latin America. Traffic in Middle East and Africa will grow at a CAGR of 51 percent.
IP traffic in North America will reach 13 exabytes per month by 2013 at a CAGR of 39 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in North America will generate 2.4 billion DVDs worth of traffic, or 10 exabytes per month.
IP traffic in Western Europe will reach 12.5 exabytes per month by 2013 at a CAGR of 37 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in Western Europe will generate 2.2 billion DVDs worth of traffic, or 9 exabytes per month.
IP traffic in Asia Pacific will reach 21 exabytes per month by 2013 at a CAGR of 42 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in Asia Pacific will generate 4.1 billion DVDs worth of traffic, or 16.5 exabytes per month.
IP traffic in Japan will reach 3 exabytes per month by 2013 at a CAGR of 37 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in Japan will generate half a billion DVDs worth of traffic, or 2 exabytes per month.
IP traffic in Latin America will reach 2 exabytes per month by 2013 at a rate of 50 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in Latin America will generate 410 million DVDs worth of traffic, or 1.7 exabytes per month.
IP traffic in Central and Eastern Europe will reach 2 exabytes per month by 2013 at a rate of 49 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in Central and Eastern Europe will generate 340 million DVDs worth of traffic, or 1.4 exabytes per month.
IP traffic in the Middle East and Africa will reach 1 exabyte per month by 2013 at a rate of 51 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in the Middle East and Africa will generate 140 million DVDs worth of traffic, or 550 petabytes per month.
Global Business Highlights
Business IP traffic will grow at a CAGR of 33 percent from 2008 to 2013. Increased adoption of advanced video communications in the enterprise segment will cause business IP traffic to grow by a factor of four between 2008 and 2013.
Business IP WAN traffic will grow at a faster pace than business Internet. Today, total business Internet traffic is more than twice the volume of IP WAN. By 2013, however, video will have made its way onto the WAN, and intercompany WANs will have matured, so that IP WAN will grow at a CAGR of 36 percent, compared to a CAGR of 32 percent for business Internet.
Business IP traffic will grow fastest in Latin America. Business IP traffic in Latin America will grow at a CAGR of 43 percent, a substantially faster pace than the global average of 33 percent. North America, Western Europe, and Japan will have slower growth rates. In volume, Asia Pacific will have the largest amount of business IP traffic in 2013 at 4.8 exabytes per month. North America will be a distant second to Asia Pacific at 3.5 exabytes per month.
What's New
The June 2009 update of the Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast incorporates a number of significant methodology enhancements. Although last year's methodology was primarily based on end-user demand for applications and services, this year's methodology ties end-user demand to fundamental supply-side enablers such as broadband speed and computing speed. Figure 1 shows the updated methodology.
Figure 1. June 2009 Methodology Incorporates Fundamental Enablers of Adoption and Usage
The inclusion of fundamental enablers allows for modeling and estimates to be made when detailed demand-side forecasts are not available. The June 2009 update includes country-level estimates for 14 countries, as well as estimates for emerging applications such as ambient video.
The following minor methodology enhancements are included in the June 2009 forecast update:
• Incorporation of compression efficiency gains. The previous forecast included the transition from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, but no compression efficiency gains were assumed. In this update, we have assumed a 7 percent year-over-year gain in compression efficiency. This estimate is taken from the University of Essex Video Networking Laboratory paper "Future Performance of Video Codecs" published in November 2006.
• Holistic approach to minutes of use. With increasing cross-platform portability of content and applications, there is a danger of double-counting traffic between fixed and mobile networks, or between public and private IP networks, especially when using multiple sources for application adoption and usage. To eliminate double-counting, the sum of all minutes of use for all applications and all networks was capped.
Aside from the above methodology enhancements, the core methodology remains unchanged from the last forecast period to help ensure continuity and consistency. The core methodology relies on analyst projections for Internet users, broadband connections, video subscribers, mobile connections, and Internet application adoption. Analyst forecasts come from SNL Kagan, Ovum, Informa Telecoms & Media, Infonetics, IDC, Frost & Sullivan, Gartner, ABI, AMI, Screendigest, Parks Associates, Yankee Group, Dell'Oro, and Synergy. Additional splits of the forecast and details of the methodology for each segment and type can be found in the sections that follow.
Global IP Traffic Growth, 2008-2013
Table 1 shows the top-line forecast. According to this forecast, global IP traffic in 2008 stands at more than 10 exabytes per month, and more than quintuples by 2013, to approach 56 exabytes per month. Consumer IP traffic will exceed 40 exabytes per month, business IP traffic will approach 13 exabytes per month, and mobility traffic will reach 2.2 exabytes per month.
Table 1. Global IP Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
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
Non-Internet IP: includes corporate IP WAN traffic, IP transport of TV/VoD
Consumer IP Traffic, 2008-2013
As shown in Table 2, global consumer IP traffic is expected to surpass 40 exabytes per month in 2013. The majority of today's consumer IP traffic is Internet traffic, but consumer IPTV and VoD traffic will grow more rapidly than Internet at a CAGR of 53 percent.
Table 2. Global Consumer IP Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Consumer Internet Traffic, 2008-2013
This category encompasses any IP traffic that crosses the Internet and is not confined to a single service provider's network. P2P traffic, still the largest share of Internet traffic today, will decrease as a percentage of overall Internet traffic. Internet video streaming and downloads are beginning to take a larger share of bandwidth, and will grow to over 60 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2013.
Table 3. Global Consumer Internet Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Definitions
Web, Email, and Data: includes web, email, instant messaging, and other data traffic (excluding file sharing)
P2P: includes peer-to-peer traffic from all recognized P2P systems such as BitTorrent, eDonkey, etc.
Gaming: includes casual online gaming, networked console gaming, and multiplayer virtual world gaming
Video Communications: includes PC-based video calling, webcam viewing, and web-based video monitoring
VoIP: includes traffic from retail VoIP services and PC-based VoIP, but excludes wholesale VoIP transport
Internet Video to PC: free or pay TV or VoD viewed on a PC, excludes P2P video file downloads
Internet Video to TV: free or pay TV or VoD delivered via Internet but viewed on a TV screen using a STB or media gateway
Ambient Video: nannycams, petcams, home security cams, and other persistent video streams
Crosscheck: Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications estimates that broadband Internet traffic averaged 946 Gbps, or 307 petabytes per month, as of November 2008. Andrew Odlyzko publishes the most recent data on Japan and other countries on his website at the University of Minnesota. Cisco's estimate for consumer Internet traffic in Japan is 268 petabytes per month, and the estimate for total Internet traffic (business and consumer Internet) in Japan in 2008 is 443 petabytes per month.
Web, Email, and Data
This is a general category that encompasses web browsing, email, instant messaging, data (which includes file transfer using HTTP, FTP, etc.) and other Internet applications. Note that "data" may include the download of video files that are not captured by the "Internet video to PC" forecast. It 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 at home, school, Internet café, or other location outside the context of a business.
Table 4. Global Consumer Web, Email, and Data Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
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 (estimated to be approximately 70 to 80 percent of P2P in 2009) in addition to the traffic counted in the "Internet Video to PC" and "Internet Video to TV" categories. Table 5 shows the forecast for consumer P2P traffic from 2008 to 2013. NOTE: 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 5. Global Consumer File-Sharing Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Internet Gaming
The "Internet Gaming" category primarily includes the traffic generated from gameplay. The download of the game is included in "Web, Email, and Data." Table 6 shows the forecast for Internet Gaming from 2008 to 2013.
Table 6. Global Consumer Internet Gaming Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Crosscheck: World of Warcraft announced in 2008 that they had reached 10 million active subscribers. Other massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have a total of approximately 7 million subscribers1. If the average MMORPG gamer plays 80 hours per month2 per game, at 20 MB per hour, the total monthly MMORPG gaming traffic in late 2008 would be 27 PB per month. This would mean our estimate for 2008, which includes casual gaming, first-person shooters, and online console gaming, is approximately two times MMORPG traffic, which is within reason.
Voice over IP (VoIP)
This category includes phone-based VoIP services direct from a service provider, phone-based VoIP services offered by a third-party but transported by a service provider, and softphone-based Internet VoIP applications such as Skype. Table 7 shows the global forecast for consumer VoIP to 2013.
Table 7. Global Consumer VoIP Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Video Communications
The "Video Communications" category includes Internet video calling, video instant messaging, video monitoring, and webcam traffic. This segment is relatively small for the forecast period, but is included for tracking purposes, because it is expected to experience substantial long-term growth in the 2013-2018 timeframe.
Table 8. Global Consumer Internet Video Communications, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Internet Video to PC
"Internet Video to PC" refers to online video that is downloaded or streamed for viewing on a PC screen. It excludes peer-to-peer downloads, and is distinct from Internet-delivery of video to a TV screen through a set-top box (STB) or equivalent device. Much of the video viewed on PC is short-form content, and a large part of it is made up of free clips, episodes, and other content offered by traditional content producers such as movie studios and television networks.
Table 9. Global Consumer Internet Video-to-PC Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Crosscheck: U.S. YouTube traffic is estimated to have generated approximately 45 petabytes per month at the end of 2008. Our estimate for user-generated content viewing traffic in that year is approximately 90 petabytes per month for North America.
Crosscheck: comScore estimates that in the United States, 14 billion online video streams were initiated in December 2008. If each stream generated 10 megabytes of traffic, the total for the United States would be 140 petabytes for the month of December. Compare this to our North American estimate of 186 petabytes per month of Internet video-to-PC traffic by year-end 2008. Cisco's Internet-video-to-PC category includes a certain amount of traffic that is excluded from the comScore estimates, such as videos from government websites and P2P Internet television applications.
Internet Video to TV
"Internet Video to TV" includes video delivered via Internet to a TV screen, by way of an Internet-enabled set-top box or equivalent device. Examples of devices now available include Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the Roku digital video player, through which users can download film and television content.
Table 10. Global Consumer Internet Video-to-TV Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Crosscheck: At the end of 2008, there were approximately 10 million Xbox consoles in North America capable of downloading video. If 30 percent of those consoles downloaded 5 hours of content per month, that would generate approximately 30 petabytes per month. Our estimate for Internet-to-TV in North America for 2009 is 56 petabytes, the remainder made up by Internet-enabled STBs and other gaming consoles.
Consumer Non-Internet IP Traffic, 2008-2013
"Non-Internet IP Video" refers to IP traffic generated by traditional commercial TV services. 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, please see "Internet Video to TV" in the previous section.)
Table 11. Global Consumer Non-Internet IP Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Business IP Traffic
The enterprise forecast is based on the number of network-connected computers worldwide. In our experience, this provides the most accurate measure of enterprise data usage. An average business user might generate 4 gigabytes per month of Internet and WAN traffic. A large-enterprise user would generate significantly more traffic, 8-10 GB per month.
Table 12. Business IP Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Definitions
Business Internet Traffic: all business traffic that crosses the public Internet
Business IP WAN: all business traffic that is transported over IP but remains within the corporate WAN
Mobile Data and Internet Traffic
Mobile data traffic includes handset-based data traffic, such as text messaging, multimedia messaging, and handset video services. Mobile Internet traffic is generated by wireless cards for portable computers and handset-based mobile Internet usage.
Table 13. Mobile Data and Internet Traffic, 2008-2013
Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
For More Information
For more information, see the companion paper "Hyperconnectivity and the Approaching Zettabyte Era." Inquiries can be directed to traffic-inquiries@cisco.com
1Source: Woodcock, Bruce Sterling. "An Analysis of MMOG Subscription Growth" MMOGCHART.COM 23.0. April 2008. http://www.mmogchart.com.
2According to a survey conduced by Nick Yee at Stanford, MMORPG players spent 22 hours per week in gameplay. Yee, N. (2006). The Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively-Multiuser Online Graphical Environments. PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15, 309-329.