Cisco sees Internet traffic quadruple by 2016

Cisco predicts the amount of traffic on the Internet will hit 1.3 zettabytes (over a trillion gigabytes) in 2016, four times as much as today. Full details at TG Daily. The site notes Cisco has a pretty good track record with its predictions, back in 2007 the company forecast an overall IP traffic volume of 28.4 exabytes per month by 2011 and the actual figure was 30.7 exabytes, about seven percent higher.

Indeed, by 2016, annual global IP traffic is set to equal the world's total data usage between 1984 and today, it says in a report.

The main reasons are more devices and more people. By 2016, says Cisco, there'll be around 3.4 million internet users - about 45 pcrcent of the world population - using 18.9 network comnnections between them.

And increasing broadband speeds video traffic and Wifi use will also add to the traffic.