Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast for 2016 – 2021 released today said digital transformation will have a significant impact on the requirements of IP networks.
HIGHLIGHTS
# Internet users from 3.3 billion to 4.6 billion or 58 percent of the population
# personal devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections from 17.1 billion to 27.1 billion
# broadband speed from 27.5 Mbps to 53 Mbps
# video viewing from 73 percent to 82 percent of total IP traffic
# IP traffic to increase 3-fold reaching annual run rate of 3.3 zettabytes by 2021
M2M connections that support Internet of Things (IoT) applications will be more than half of the total 27.1 billion devices and connections and will account for five percent of IP traffic.
IoT innovations in connected home, connected healthcare, smart cars/transportation and a host of other next-generation M2M services are driving this incremental growth — a 2.4-fold increase from 5.8 billion in 2016 to 13.7 billion by 2021.
With the rise of connected applications such as health monitors, medicine dispensers, and first-responder connectivity, the health vertical will be fastest-growing industry segment (30 percent CAGR).
The connected car and connected cities applications will have the second-fastest growth (29 percent CAGRs respectively).
Video will dominate IP traffic and Internet traffic growth — representing 80 percent of Internet traffic by 2021, up from 67 percent in 2016.
There will be nearly 1.9 billion Internet video users (excluding mobile-only) by 2021, up from 1.4 billion in 2016.
The world will reach three trillion Internet video minutes per month by 2021, which is five million years of video per month, or about one million video minutes every second.
The above chart is from Cisco Visual Networking Index for Asia Pacific region
Internet video will increase 15-fold and reach 13 percent of Internet video traffic by 2021. VR/AR traffic will increase 20-fold and represent one percent of entertainment traffic.
IP traffic is expected to reach 278 exabytes per month by 2021, up from 96 exabytes per month in 2016.
IP traffic is expected to reach an annual run rate of 3.3 zettabytes by 2021.
Busy hour Internet traffic is increasing faster than average Internet traffic. Busy hour Internet traffic will grow 4.6-fold (35 percent CAGR) from 2016 to 2021, reaching 4.3 Pbps by 2021, compared to average Internet traffic that will grow 3.2-fold (26 percent CAGR) over the same period reaching 717 Tbps by 2021.
Wi-Fi and mobile-connected devices will generate 73 percent of Internet traffic by 2021.
2021 Internet access percentages – Wi-Fi: 53 percent; cellular: 20 percent; fixed: 27 percent
2016 Internet access percentages – Wi-Fi: 52 percent; cellular: 10 percent; fixed: 38 percent
Public Wi-Fi hotspots including homespots will grow 6-fold from 2016 to 2021 from 94 million in 2016 to 541.6 million by 2021.
Wi-Fi homespots will grow from 85 million in 2016 to 526.2 million by 2021.
Leading hotspot countries: China (170 million by 2021), US (86 million by 2021), Japan (33 million by 2021), and France (30 million by 2021).
35 percent of Internet traffic will be carried metro-to-metro by 2021, up from 22 percent in 2016.
23 percent of Internet traffic will be carried on regional backbones (without touching cross-country backbones) by 2021, compared to 20 percent in 2016.
41 percent of Internet traffic will traverse cross-country backbones by 2021, compared to 58 percent in 2016.
SD-WAN traffic will grow at a CAGR of 44 percent compared to five percent for traditional WAN.
SD-WAN will increase six-fold over the forecast period and represent 25 percent of WAN traffic by 2021.
Average DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks size increasing steadily and approaching 1.2 Gpbs — enough to take most organizations completely offline
