June 11, 2014
84%, which is how much Internet traffic Cisco expects to be video in four years. As Marina Lopes of Reuters reports:
Video consumption of the World Cup alone will generate nearly as much Internet traffic as occurred in all of Australia in 2013, according to a new Cisco Systems Inc report that shows growth in Internet traffic is fueled by video.
The report, which says video is expected to grow to 84 percent of Internet traffic in the United States by 2018 from 78 percent currently, raises questions about whether Internet service providers should prioritize traffic, which has become a controversial issue.
“In the future at some point every month is going to look like the world cup month because the consumption just keeps getting bigger and bigger,” said Robert Pepper, Cisco’s vice president of global technology policy.
Often forgotten in the great net neutrality debate is the fact that bandwidth-intensive video is the future of the Internet. And that presents some very real engineering challenges.