Netflix video streaming is now the single largest source of peak downstream
Internet traffic in the U.S., according to a new report by Sandvine. The
streaming video service now accounts for 29.7 percent of peak downstream
traffic, up from 21 percent last fall.
That puts Netflix above HTTP websites (18 percent), BitTorrent (11 percent),
and YouTube (10 percent) as a source of downstream traffic during peak times in
North America. (BitTorrent still accounts for half of all upstream traffic). As
whole, “real-time entertainment” (which is mostly video streaming, but also
includes streaming music) accounted for 49 percent of downstream traffic in
March, 2011, versus 19 percent for P2P file sharing, and 17 percent for Web
browsing.
Video files are so big that it does not take much usage for it to take over in
terms of bandwidth consumed. But these numbers definitely point to a future
where video accounts for more and more of the traffic on the Internet. As
recently as last November, Web video alone accounted for an estimated 37
percent of Internet traffic.
But as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings points out, bandwidth to the home keeps
increasing along with demand—he expects a gigabit to the home to be commonplace
within ten years. As he told me earlier this month, “streaming is the core of
our business,” but he also points out in the video below that most of the video
to the home is cached on the edge of the network rather than going through the
backbone.
CrunchBase Information
Netflix
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