Netflix Becomes Largest Source of Internet Traffic in North America

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Netflix Becomes Largest Source of Internet Traffic in North America

By CircleID Reporter
May 17, 2011, 7:21 pm PDT Views: 18,403 Add Comment

Netflix has become the largest source of Internet traffic in North America, according Sandvine’s Spring 2011 Global Internet Phenomena Report.

Company further reports that currently, Real-Time Entertainment applications consume 49.2% of peak aggregate traffic, up from 29.5% in 2009—a 60% increase [see figture below]. Sandvine forecasts that the Real-Time Entertainment category will represent 55-60% of peak aggregate traffic by the end of 2011.

Other findings include:

• In Latin America, Social Networking (overwhelmingly Facebook) is a bigger source of traffic than YouTube, representing almost 14% of network traffic. 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. In the UK, BBC’s iPlayer is 6.6% of peak downstream traffic, reflecting the demand for localized content in many markets. Overall, individual subscribers in Europe consume twice the amount of data as North Americans.

By CircleID Reporter

CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.

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