Sandvine: Netflix now 29.7% of North American Peak Downstream Traffic

In North America, Netflix is now 29.7% of peak downstream traffic and has become the largest source of Internet traffic overall, according to Sandvine's newly released Global Internet Phenomena Report.


Sandvine's study is based on anonymous data, aggregated from fixed and mobile service provider networks spanning Europe, Latin America and North America. The company said its latest report aggregates data from over
220 service provider customers spanning more than 85 countries.


Some highlights:


Currently, Real-Time Entertainment applications consume 49.2% of peak aggregate traffic, up from 29.5% in 2009 – a 60% increase.


Sandvine forecasts that the Real-Time Entertainment category will represent 55-60% of peak aggregate traffic by the end of 2011.


In Latin America, Social Networking (overwhelmingly Facebook) is a bigger source of traffic than YouTube, representing almost 14% of network traffic. [Figure 4] Real-Time Entertainment represents 27.5% of peak aggregate traffic, still the largest contributor of traffic in that region.


In Europe, Real-Time Entertainment continues a steady climb, rising to 33.2% of peak aggregate traffic, up from 31.9% last fall. BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing protocol, is the largest single component of both upstream (59.7%) and downstream (21.6%) Internet traffic during peak periods.
http://www.sandvine.com