> The Zettabyte Era or Zettabyte Zone[1] is a period of human and computer science history that started in the mid-2010s. The precise starting date depends on whether it is defined as when the global IP traffic first exceeded one zettabyte, which happened in 2016, or when the amount of digital data in the world first exceeded a zettabyte, which happened in 2012. A zettabyte is a multiple of the unit byte that measures digital storage, and it is equivalent to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1021) bytes.

> According to Cisco Systems, an American multinational technology conglomerate, the global IP traffic achieved an estimated 1.2 zettabytes (an average of 96 exabytes (EB) per month) in 2016. Global IP traffic refers to all digital data that passes over an IP network which includes, but is not limited to, the public Internet. The largest contributing factor to the growth of IP traffic comes from video traffic (including online streaming services like Netflix and YouTube).