This article by Mary Jander of Internet Evolution. June 2010

To many IT pros, the latest report from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) states the obvious: The Internet’s getting bigger. Even so — and even in light of Cisco’s vested interest in the growth of IP networks worldwide — the news contains some nuggets worth chewing on.

The basics from Cisco’s “Visual Networking Index,” conducted twice yearly, indicate that global Internet traffic will more than quadruple by 2014, reaching a volume of 767 exabytes, an order of magnitude increase over IP network traffic worldwide in 2008. (Compare these levels to the 300 exabytes projected for 2011 by IDC in 2007.)

According to Cisco, in 2014, the Internet will carry about 64 exabytes of global traffic monthly — equal to 16 billion DVDs; 21 trillion MP3s; or 399 quadrillion text messages.

Video will account for the lion’s share of consumer Internet traffic, representing more than 91 percent of it by 2014, thanks to the predicted rise of HDTV and 3DTV.

What’s all this got to do with enterprise networks? Plenty, says Cisco. Even though from 2009 through 2014 the ratio of consumer to business traffic will increase, business traffic will also increase on its own, more than tripling to an estimated 7.7 exabytes a month, Cisco says — the equivalent of 5 billion DVDs. Interestingly, this level of business IP traffic will represent just about 13 percent of all monthly traffic in 2014.

Like the consumer Internet, business traffic will also contain much more video content near-term, in Cisco’s view: Business video conferencing will grow tenfold from 2009-2014 (a compound annual growth rate of 57 percent), nearly three times the rate of growth compared to overall business IP traffic. And within the business video conferencing segment, Web-based video conferencing will show a CAGR of 183 percent from 2009-2014.