1.3 Zettabytes

By 2016, 1.3ZB annually will run over the Internet. That’s equivalent to 38 million DVDs coursing through networks every hour, or 10 times more traffic than the 121 exabytes that were generated in 2008, according to Cisco. It’s also more than the 1.2ZB that was the generated total between 1984 and 2012.

That’s the number of network connections worldwide projected for 2016. It comes out to about 2.5 connections for each person on Earth, and it’s being fueled not only by the skyrocketing increase in the number of smartphones, tablets and other smart devices in use, but also by the growth in machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, Cisco says.

By 2016, PCs will account for 81 percent of the Internet traffic generated. Illustrating the growth of non-PC connected devices, that 81 percent compares with the 94 percent of Internet traffic generated by PCs in 2011.

That is the number of Internet users expected by 2016, which represents about 45 percent of the world’s population for that year, as projected by the United Nations.

The number of business Internet users is expected to jump from 1.6 billion last year to 2.3 billion in 2016.

That will be the average fixed broadband speed by 2016, almost four times the 9M bps average in 2011. The faster broadband speed will mean a significantly better user experience, according to Cisco.

There will be 1.5 billion Internet video users by 2016, up from 792 million in 2011. Video will continue to be an increasingly large percentage of all global Internet traffic.

By 2016, 1.2 million video minutes will travel the Internet every second. That’s the equivalent of 833 days, or more than two years. By 2016, all video will account for more than 86 percent of all global consumer IP traffic.

That’s the number of business people who will use desktop video conferencing in 2016. In 2011, that number was 36.4 million.

Global mobile Internet data traffic will grow rapidly, to 10.8EB per month—or 130EB a year—by 2016. That’s 18 times more than what was generated in 2011.

By 2016, more than half the world’s Internet traffic will come from WiFi connections, helped in part by the desire of wireless carriers to use WiFi networks to take some of the traffic burden off their increasingly stressed broadband networks. In addition, users will continue to demand more persistent connectivity.

In 2011, the average Internet user generated almost 12G bit of traffic per month. That will grow to 32G bit per month by 2016.