Cisco VNI global IP 2014: we live in a video world

As is now usual, after the february mobile Visual Networking Index, Cisco releases in June the global IP version. Here are a few interesting measurements and forecasts and some associated thoughts.

Global IP traffic's growth is slowing down somewhat, having grown five fold in the last five years and anticipated to grow threefold over the next five. This is not overly surprising, a 21% CAGR is a sign of a maturing market.

CDN

Surprisingly, more than half of the traffic next year should be local (as opposed to long-haul), which underlines the growing importance of CDNs to deliver content at the edge of the network.
CDN delivered in 2013 36% of the data traffic and are set to deliver 55% by 2018, with a growth spurred by OTT video. CDNs will deliver the 67% of all video traffic from 53% today.
I think here, mobile CDNs are not represented, which is unsurprising since most of the movement in that space has happened only recently. Mobile carriers CDNs will add to these numbers.

Mobile

Cisco predicts that mobile traffic (including wifi) will exceed fixed by 2018 (61 to 39% vs. 44 to 56% in 2013). Again, not so surprising, except we could see in my opinion fixed being overcome earlier than that. Machine to machine traffic over wireless, I think, is quite systematically underestimated.

Mobile data traffic, unsurprisingly still sees a 61% CAGR and will increase eleven fold by 2018.

Video

Video traffic will account for 79% of overall IP traffic by 2018 (66% today). If we add TV and video, we are looking at 90%...

OTT video viewed on connected TVs, consoles, sticks, etc... doubled in 2013 and is set to quadruple by 2018. I believe this is also under-evaluated. I think 4k will weigh heavily on these media and h265 / vp9 will be late to assuage the burden.

All in all, no great surprise this year, a confirmation of last year's trends. I believe that 4k, together with changes in so-called "net neutrality" provisions will accelerate most trends by 1 to 2 years.