According to Cisco's Visual Networking Index, or (VNI), released towards the beginning of June, machine-to-machine connections that support IoT (the Internet of Things), could make up over 50% of all connections and devices by 2021. This means that over half of the 27.1 billion connections and devices predicted to be available that year will be involved with IoT. What's more, IoT is set to account for 5% of all global traffic in the same space.
The largest drivers of growth for this change are the efforts that have emerged with connected homes, cars, and healthcare solutions, according to the index. During 2016, approximately 5.8 billion devices were IoT connected, meaning that the market needs a 2.4 times increase to meet the prediction of 13.7 billion devices over the next five years.
What Can We Expect?
As this IoT revolution comes closer, we can expect to see that faster broadband speeds will allow users to consume more video too. According to the Cisco index, video is likely to make up around 82% of the IP traffic consumption in 2021, a rise from approximately 73% today.
Live video is especially likely to see faster growth, with a 15x increase over the next five years, eventually reaching around 13% of total video traffic by 2021. Cisco's index also found that augmented reality and virtual reality should see 20 times increase as consumers search for new ways to enjoy the internet.
By the time we hit 2021, we're also likely to see a growth in global IP traffic by 3 times. What's more, mobile and WiFi devices should make up about 73% of that traffic by that time. However, as the amount of traffic grows, so will security attacks. Cisco found that the average DDoS attack size will approach 1.2 Gbps by 2021, which might take most organisations completely offline.
