AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Inside Online Video

Cisco Systems this week released Approaching the Zettabyte Era, a report on the growth of the Internet through 2012. The predictions for the Internet alone are food for thought (annual traffic in 2012 will be 522 exabytes), but it should surprise no one that online video plays an enormous part in those predictions.

According to the report, 90% of all consumer traffic in 2012 will be video. That includes all forms — VoD, P2P, etc. Internet video alone (i.e. YouTube) will account for 50% of all consumer traffic. Even today, Internet video accounts for one-fourth of all consumer traffic.

Other bits of futuristic online video awesomeness:

In 2012, Internet video will be nearly 400 times the U.S. Internet backbone in 2000. It would take well over half a million years to watch all the online video that will cross the network each month in 2012. Internet video will generate 10 exabytes per month in 2012.

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