Cisco Systems this week released Approaching the Zettabyte Era, a report on the growth of the Internet through 2012. The predictions for the Internet alone are food for thought (annual traffic in 2012 will be 522 exabytes), but it should surprise no one that online video plays an enormous part in those predictions.
According to the report, 90% of all consumer traffic in 2012 will be video. That includes all forms — VoD, P2P, etc. Internet video alone (i.e. YouTube) will account for 50% of all consumer traffic. Even today, Internet video accounts for one-fourth of all consumer traffic.
Other bits of futuristic online video awesomeness:
In 2012, Internet video will be nearly 400 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 2012. Internet video will generate 10 exabytes per month in 2012.
The Internet is (still) not collapsing under the weight of online video. Service providers are accelerating their infrastructure upgrade plans in response to the traffic growth. As a result of the upgrades, utilization levels of international Internet backbones actually declined in 2007, as reported by Telegeography. In the near term, the most formidable challenge that online video poses for the Internet backbone will be flash crowds rather than the overall volume of traffic.
YouTube is just the beginning. Online video will experience three waves of growth. Even with a six-fold increase between 2007 and 2012, current Internet video growth is in its initial stages. Internet video to the PC screen will soon be exceeded by a second wave arising from the delivery of Internet video to the TV screen. Beyond 2015, a third wave of video traffic will result from video communications.
Non-Internet IP video will increase more rapidly than consumer Internet. The twin trends of on-demand viewing and high-definition video are generating very rapid growth in cable video and IPTV traffic transported over IP in the metro. Consumer IPTV and CATV traffic will grow at a 65 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2007 and 2012, compared to a CAGR of 43 percent for consumer Internet traffic
Note that last bit. Computers intimidate people; online video delivered through something other than what looks like a computer could well see faster adoption.
Cisco also identifies the advantages of various forms of online video — from the interactivity of PCs to the entertainment value of of set-top boxes. There are many ways to get inside online video, and those many ways will make up most of your Internet experience in 2012.
SOURCE: CISCO SYSTEMS
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