Zettabtyes are Coming

By Brett Molina:

In four years, we will talk about Internet traffic in zettabytes.

What’s a zettabyte? It’s one trillion gigabytes, and by 2016, global Internet traffic will reach 1.3 zettabytes,says a study by Cisco.

Broken down monthly, Web traffic around the world will make a fourfold jump compared to 2011, according to Cisco’s findings.

Cisco predicts more than 18.9 billion connected devices will be available in 2016, an average of 2.5 connections per person.

Along with more devices, there will be more people around the globe hopping on to the Internet. Cisco expects 3.4 billion Internet users in four years, equivalent to 45% of the world population.

Among other findings:

— Wireless Internet connections will slowly take over wired links. More than half of all global traffic is expected to come from Wi-Fi.

— More than 1.2 million video minutes will travel the Web every second. To put it in perspective, that’s equal to 833 days.

— Mobile Internet traffic will surge in the next four years. Cisco finds it will increase 18 times by 2016, to 10.8 exabytes (one exabyte is equal to 1 billion gigabytes).