Cisco Says the Web of the Future Is All About Video

Cisco said today that the web will continue its breakneck rate of growth to hit 56 exabytes of data per month by 2013. In 2008, IP traffic accounted for 9 exabytes per month, according to the company’s second annual visual networking index. Cisco, which stands to profit by selling its communications gear to ISPs and businesses trying to handle the growth in bandwidth, notes that most of the increase in traffic will be related to video — in fact, by 2013, 90 percent of web traffic will be video, it forecast, from services like Hulu to video-on-demand via the local cable provider.

Video comprises a large amount of the total traffic because video files are many times larger than text files and web pages, and because video is slowly moving from being delivered via RF (cable TV) and over the air (broadcast) to being delivered as an IPTV service. People are also carrying around more video-capable devices, such as mobile phones that can capture video and personal camcorders such as the Flip, whose parent company was recently purchased by Cisco. Once that video is captured, people are inclined to share it via the web.

Today’s news mirrors Cisco’s findings in its first survey issued last year that estimated video would be 90 percent of IP traffic by 2012. By 2013 the biggest driver of traffic will be Internet video delivered to the PC, according to Cisco. It expects total data consumed by newteevee to double between 2011 and 2013 to 13 exabytes per month. that video consumption will surpass the amount of data consumed by P2P file sharing in 2011. However, Cisco doesn’t have a lot of faith that people will have access to a lot of Internet video on oldteevees. Cisco sees a spike in delivering web video to TVs in 2011, but by 2013 that type of traffic still only amounts to around 2.7 exabytes of data per month. For more on the data check out the story over at GigaOM.