Cisco: Video to pump global IP traffic 6x by 2012

Cisco has created a report predicting global IP traffic will climb up to more than half a zettabyte (522 extabytes) by 2012, with growth being driven by video traffic and social networking in the consumer market.  But, will it?

This reporter is having some déjà vu all over again back to those dot.com days where insane predictions of traffic doubling resulted in massive backbone and fiber deployments.

Cisco has generated a Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast over the next four years which dovetails quite nicely with the company's pronouncements at CES of visual networking - the combination of video, web 2.0 social networking and collaborative applications -- being the Next Big Thing. 

According to Cisco's crystal ball, Internet video traffic alone will be 400 times the traffic carried by the U.S. Internet backbone in 2000. IP traffic is alleged to increase at a combined annual growth grate (CAGR) of 46 percent from 2007 to 2012, a doubling nearly every two years.  Global business IP traffic is forecast to grow strongly at a CAGR of 35 percent from 2007, with increased broadband penetration in the small business segment and increased adoption of advanced video communication (such as Cisco's TelePresence product) as major drivers.

As much as this reporter would like to drink the kool-aid on this particular prediction, carrier grumbling to impose bandwidth limits and a general reluctance to buy capital equipment like it was 1999 is unlikely to provide the boon Cisco would like. Belt tightening due to a slowing U.S. economy and higher energy prices are also likely to place a crimp on this scenario.

For more:
- Cisco's not-fully-baked half zettabyte prophesy.

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