BitTorrent Traffic Declines As Netflix And YouTube Dominate
By Sarah Jacoby November 25, 2013 2:00 pm
reprintsIt’s definitely not just you spending Saturdays binging on Netflix (NFLX) shows.
In Sandvine’s latest Internet traffic study, streaming entertainment appears to have taken over, while file-sharing protocol BitTorrent now takes up less than 10 percent of aggregated traffic. Much of that “real-time entertainment” traffic is driven by Netflix, which, on its own, takes up almost 30 percent of all traffic. When combined with YouTube, Hulu and other video-streaming services, that traffic accounts for more than 60 percent of traffic during peak hours.
Ten years ago, BitTorrent was taking that 60 percent, says The Washington Post.
The study also shows a similar pattern for data usage on mobile phones, with streaming entertainment accounting for about 43 percent of peak traffic there. And as more people choose the streaming option over traditional TV, our demand for better broadband capacity will only increase.
