Networking major, Cisco’s new study findings as part of its Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast and Methodology, 2009-2014 projects that video will dominate the global IP traffic with such content comprising 91% of global consumer IP traffic by 2014.

The IP traffic is expected to quadruple during the five year period due to influence of factors such as improvements in network bandwidth capacity and Internet speeds along with HDTV and 3DTV.

Globally the online video community is estimated to be over one billion users by the end of 2010. By 2014, traffic equivalents of 11.8 billion DVDs, 15.7 trillion MP3s and 295 quadrillion text messages will cross the global internet network.

While in 2009, consumer IP traffic represented 79% of monthly global IP traffic, by 2014 this figure will rise to 87% says Cisco with the rest accounting for business IP traffic.

Mobile Data traffic is estimated to surge by as much as 39 times during the five year period from 2009 to 2014. By 2014, the annual global mobile data traffic is expected to reach 3.5 exabytes per month i.e. a run rate of over 42 exabytes on a yearly basis.

On the global IP traffic trends, North America is estimated to generate the highest IP-traffic at 19.0 exabytes per month, Asia-Pacific at 17.4 exabytes per month, Western Europe at 16.2 exabytes per month and Japan at 4.3 exabytes per month.

In terms of growth rate, Latin America is forecasted to record 51% CAGR by 2014, Middle East & Africa 45 % and Central Europe with 38% CAGR.

The study points out that in a decade’s time, the global residential download speed has increased35 times from 127 kbps in 2000 to 4.4 mbps by 2010.

“Service providers are faced with evolving bandwidth and scalability requirements as residential, business and mobile consumers continue to demonstrate a healthy appetite for advanced video services - across a variety of networks and devices,” said Suraj Shetty, vice president, Cisco Service Provider Marketing. “IP networks must be intelligent and flexible enough to support this tremendous variety of traffic growth.”