NEW DELHI: India is set to have the highest Internet Protocol (IP) traffic growth rate with a 44 per cent compound annual growth rate from 2012-2017 followed by Indonesia (42 per cent CAGR) and South Africa (31 per cent CAGR) over the forecast period, a new study has revealed.

The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2012-2017) projects that global IP traffic will grow three-fold between 2012 and 2017.

By 2017, the highest traffic-generating countries will be the United States (37 exabytes per month) and China (18 exabytes per month), says the report.

At the regional level, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) will continue to be the fastest growing IP traffic region from 2012-2017 (five-fold growth, 38 per cent compound annual growth rate over the forecast period); MEA was the fastest growing region last year as well (10-fold growth, 57 per cent compound annual growth rate for 2011- 2016 forecast period) in this category, the report said.

Asia-Pacific (APAC) will generate the most IP traffic by 2017 (43.4 exabytes/month), maintaining its leadership from last year.

According to the report, by 2017, there will be about 3.6 billion Internet users - more than 48 per cent of the world‘s projected population (7.6 billion). In 2012, there were 2.3 billion Internet users - about 32 per cent of the world‘s population (7.2 billion).

By 2017, there will be more than 19 billion global network connections (fixed/mobile personal devices, M2M connections), up from about 12 billion connections in 2012.

Global network users will generate 3 trillion internet video minutes per month, that is six million years of video per month, or 1.2 million video minutes every second or more than two years worth of video every second.