“We are in an era where technological advances are happening at an exponential rate. According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index Forecast, in just four years you can expect to see the number of mobile devices skyrocket, non-PC devices to reign supreme, and online video to do a complete takeover of television. Head’s up—maybe it’s time to start carving out some space for those extra devices in your 2019 home-of-the-future.

• Annual global IP traffic will surpass the zettabyte (1000 exabytes) threshold in 2016, and the two zettabyte threshold in 2019. Global IP traffic will reach 1.1 zettabytes per year or 88.4 exabytes (one billion gigabytes) per month in 2016. By 2019, global IP traffic will pass a new milestone figure of 2.0 zettabytes per year, or 168.0 exabytes per month.
• Global IP traffic has increased more than fivefold in the past 5 years, and will increase nearly threefold over the next 5 years. Overall, IP traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23 percent from 2014 to 2019.
• Busy-hour Internet traffic is growing more rapidly than average Internet traffic. Busy-hour (or the busiest 60‑minute period in a day) Internet traffic increased 34 percent in 2014, compared with 26 percent growth in average traffic. Busy-hour Internet traffic will increase by a factor of 3.4 between 2014 and 2019, while average Internet traffic will increase 2.8-fold. Busy-hour Internet traffic will reach 1.7 petabits per second (Pbps) by 2019.
• Metro traffic will surpass long-haul traffic in 2015, and will account for 66 percent of total IP traffic by 2019. Globally, metro traffic will grow nearly twice as fast as long-haul traffic from 2014 to 2019. The higher growth in metro networks is due in part to the increasingly significant role of content delivery networks, which bypass long-haul links and deliver traffic to metro and regional backbones.
• Content delivery networks will carry over half of Internet traffic by 2019. Globally, Sixty-two percent of all Internet traffic will cross content delivery networks by 2019 globally, up from 39 percent in 2014.
• Over half of all IP traffic will originate with non-PC devices by 2019. In 2014, only 40 percent of total IP traffic originated with non-PC devices, but by 2019 the non-PC share of total IP traffic will grow to 67 percent. PC-originated traffic will grow at a CAGR of 9 percent, while TVs, tablets, smartphones, and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules will have traffic growth rates of 17 percent, 65 percent, 62 percent, and 71 percent, respectively.
• Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2019. By 2019, wired devices will account for 33 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 66 percent of IP traffic. In 2014, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 54 percent.
• Global Internet traffic in 2019 will be equivalent to 64 times the volume of the entire global Internet in 2005. Globally, Internet traffic will reach 18 gigabytes (GB) per capita by 2019, up from 6 GB per capita in 2014.
• The number of devices connected to IP networks will be three times as high as the global population in 2019. There will be three networked devices per capita by 2019, up from nearly two networked devices per capita in 2014. Accelerated in part by the increase in devices and the capabilities of those devices, IP traffic per capita will reach 22 GB per capita by 2019, up from 8 GB per capita in 2014.
• Broadband speeds will double by 2019. By 2019, global fixed broadband speeds will reach 43 Mbps, up from 20 Mbps in 2014.”