Known as 'medianet', this technology suite is designed to enable advanced communications, collaboration and entertainment experiences through video and rich media-optimised service provider, business, and home networks,

Data-based communications are being replaced by video and rich media, which is straining the architectural foundations of both public and private networks serving consumers and businesses. This network transformation toward rich media-optimised networks is the driver behind Cisco's video strategy and represents Internet networking's growing impact on the daily lives of consumers and professionals.

"The Internet and IP networks as we know them are changing," said Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies group. "In the near future, 90 per cent of consumer network traffic will be video and rich media.

Cisco released video-specific findings this week to provide new insights on a variety of consumer and business IP networking trends driven largely by the increasing use of video and Web 2.0 social networking and collaboration applications:

-- Professional/traditional broadcast video content will become 80 per cent of all Internet video viewed on PCs/laptops by 2012.