The Future of Networking: 12 Important Facts

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global bandwidth

A new research report from Cisco sees the consumption of network bandwidth increasing by several orders of magnitude between now and 2020.

The number of global mobile users will grow from 3 billion (40% of the 7.3 billion global population) in 2015, to 4.1 billion (52% of the global population of 7.8 billion) in 2020. By 2020, Cisco forecasts there will be 26.3 billion total mobile-ready devices/connections, including 12.2 billion M2M connections. Mobile video will make up 82% of mobile data traffic by 2020.

Cisco expects broadband speed to increase 1.9-fold from 2015 to 2020 (from 24.7M bps to 47.7M bps).

By 2020, global IP traffic will reach an annual run rate of 2.3 zettabytes per year. Global IP traffic will increase threefold from 2015 to 2020. Global IP traffic will show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%, reaching 194.4 exabytes (EB) in 2020 from 72.5 EB in 2015. The two regions with the largest volume of traffic, the Asia-Pacific and North America, will account for 65% of global IP traffic by 2020.

Cisco forecasts there will be 4.5 billion connected devices in North America by 2020 alone.

PCs will become one of many devices. Globally, PCs will go from accounting for 53% of IP traffic in 2015, to 29% of IP traffic in 2020. Global IP traffic from non-PC devices was 47% of total IP traffic in 2015, and will be 71% of total IP traffic in 2020. Portable devices, such as smartphones and tablets, accounted for 15% of IP traffic in 2015 and will be 43% of IP traffic in 2020.

M2M connections will grow 2.5-fold during the forecast period, at a 20% CAGR to 12.2 billion connections by 2020. Globally, M2M modules accounted for only 1% of IP traffic in 2015 and will be 3% of IP traffic in 2020. M2M traffic will grow more than sixfold during the forecast period, at a 44% CAGR to 6.2 EBs by 2020.

By 2020, there will be more than 729 million connected health connections globally, up from 144 million in 2015. Connected health will be the fastest-growing M2M vertical with a 39% CAGR or fivefold growth over the forecast period.

48% of all mobile devices globally will be IPv6-capable by 2020. M2M emerges as a key segment of growth for IPv6-capable devices, reaching nearly 3.7 billion by 2020, a thirteenfold increase during the forecast period. The CAGR for IPv6 is projected to be 27% through 2020. Global IPv6 traffic grew 243% in 2015. IPv6 traffic will grow sixteenfold from 2015 to 2020, a CAGR of 74%.

Globally, there will be 433 million hotspots by 2020, a sevenfold increase from 64.2 million in 2015.

The average Internet user will generate 44.1GB of traffic per month in 2020, up 134 percent from 18.9GB per month in 2015, a CAGR of 19%. There will be 2.2 billion business Internet users (65% of the global workforce) and 577 million business mobile users (17% of the global workforce).

There will be 6.9 billion business devices and connections (up from 3.9 billion in 2015). The average business Internet user will have 3.1 devices and connections. There will be 1.8 billion business mobile device and connections (up from 1 billion in 2015).

By 2020, there will be more than 200 million smart homes globally, up from 90 million in 2015. By 2020, a single smart home video surveillance camera will drive as much as 2.4GB of monthly traffic on average, up from 1GB in 2015.