Experts have been talking about the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) for what seems like years already, but now Cisco Systems Ltd. is illustrating this in graphic form with its latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) report.

Assuming Cisco has its numbers right, the IoT will account for the vast majority of new connections to the Internet over the next five years. More specifically, Cisco says machine-to-machine (M2M) connections will grow from 24 percent of all connections now to 43 percent of all Internet connections by 2019.

Over the same period, the total number of Internet connections in the world will rise from 2.8 billion to 3.9 billion – which means M2M connections will grow from 0.72 billion now to 1.677 billion by 2019, an increase of 1.005 billion connections.

Somewhat curiously, this also means that there will be just 95 million ‘human’ connections made in the same period, if Cisco’s figures are correct.

The report also looks at the growth of overall web traffic, and said that faster networks and more video, as opposed to new hardware, will be the biggest driver. Cisco says the average broadband speed will rise from 20.3 Mbps to 42.5 Mbps by 2019, and the thirst for video streams will see global traffic hit two zettabytes annually. Sadly for carriers, with low-bitrate M2M connections excluded from Cisco’s 2019 traffic forecast, Cisco’s figures suggest more of them will be bitten by the “Netflix-effect”, so long as the ‘network neutrality’ doctrine remains in place.

Another interesting stat from Cisco – with video’s taking up more of our time, and with high-definition video expected to account for 53.5 percent of all video traffic by 2019, that will see downloads-per-user triple from an average of 28 GB a month now to 75.6 GB per-user per-month.

As well as video, we’re also likley to see a lot more 4G networks up and running. 4G will account for 18 percent of all mobile data by 2019, compared to just a couple of percent now. As for the remainder of mobile traffic, 63 percent will come from Wi-Fi devices connected to fixed broadband networks, while just 19 percent of users will rely on wired ethernet connections.

Image credit: Ramdlon via Pixabay.com; Infographic via Cisco Systems Ltd.