The statistic is part of the company’s Visual Networking Index forecast, which was published this week. Other predictions for the next five years include a global increase of internet users from 3.3 to 4.6 billion, and a near doubling of broadband speeds, from 27.5 Mbs to 53 Mbs.
The figures also state that over the period in question IP traffic will increase three-fold, reaching an annual run rate of 3.3 zettabytes.
Speaking of the findings Yvette Kanouff, Cisco’s SVP and GM said: “Global digital transformation continues to impact billions of consumers and businesses.
“Driving network innovation with service providers will be key for Cisco to support the needs of their customers who want reliable, secure, and high quality connected experiences.”
According to the company, the fastest growing vertical from now until 2021 will be the health sector, which will rely increasingly on connected applications such as health monitors and medicine dispensers. The area with the second fastest growth will connected car and connected city applications.
Less positively, the report also predicts that the size of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks will increase steadily, peaking at around 1.2 Gpbs. This, according to Cisco, is enough to take most organisations completely offline.
