While cable and other ISPs keep trying to sell faster and faster Internet traffic to customers (Google is prepping to sell 1 Gbps service in Kansas City in 2012) it looks like more and more net traffic is being handled by WiFi connections rather than wired net connections. That"s the conclusion of a new study from networking hardware company Cisco. The report, posted online, also predicted where net traffic will be in the next five years.
There"s actually a lot of interesting facts and predictions in the report including a prediction by Cisco that by 2015, " ... the gigabyte equivalent of all movies ever made will cross global IP networks every 5 minutes." One of the other predictions is that net traffic via WiFi will actually exceed that of wired networks by 2015. Cisco says that in 2010 "wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 63 percent." However in just four years Cisco predicts that "wired devices will account for 46 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 54 percent of IP traffic."
Cisco says that in 2010 there were only a few hundred thousands households in the world that generate a terabyte of Internet traffic a month. However Cisco says that number will increase to a massive 6 million households by 2015. Cisco says that 20 million households wil generate half a terabyte of traffic by 2015.
Finally, global net traffic will reach 966 exabytes a year in 2015, according to Cisco. Yep, that"s almost a zettabyte of global IP traffic in just one year.