Internet traffic continues to grow year over year, but one segment is growing faster than any other -- mobile. Networking giant Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) today released a Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast for Global Mobile Data Traffic, showing a dramatic rise over the next five years.

"We're projecting overall growth of mobile traffic for the forecast period of 2011 to 2016 to increase 18 fold," Doug Webster, senior director of SP Marketing at Cisco, told InternetNews.com.

According to Webster, the forecast is also relatively conservative. As a proof point, Webster noted that originally Cisco had forecast mobile traffic for 2011 to grow at 131 percent year-over-year. The actual final number came in at 133 percent. "In general for these studies we err on the conservative side so even though 130 exabytes for 2016 seems like a lot, using history as a guide, it may well likely exceed that."

The Cisco forecast is projecting the most amount of growth to occur in the 2015-2016 timeframe. During that period, Cisco is projecting that the mobile Internet will grow by the total volume of traffic generated in 2012.