Driven primarily by an explosion in online video, total IP traffic is expected to reach half a zettabyte by 2012, according to new research by Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO).

With traffic nearly doubling every two years, the Cisco Visual Networking Index forecasts IP traffic to increase by a factor of six from 6.6 million exabytes per month in 2007 to 44 exabytes per month -- or an annual run rate of 522 exabytes per year -- in 2012. (A zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes. Or, it's a 1 with 21 zeros behind it, for you non-math geeks.)

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