Netflix streaming is largest source of Internet traffic
Accounting for 29.7 per cent of all information downloaded during peak usage hours by North American broadband-connected households in March, Netflix Inc. received the title in the latest global Internet phenomena report released by Sandvine Corp. on Tuesday.
In its ninth such report, Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine found the amount of data consumed by users streaming television shows and movie from Netflix's online service exceeded even that of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technology Bit-Torrent.
But that doesn't mean sanctioned Internet video services such as Netflix or Hulu are wholly replacing P2P services such as BitTorrent, which has become synonymous with piracy.
"Netflix has surpassed file sharing and BitTorrent, but BitTorrent hasn't really declined," explained Tom Donnelly, executive vicepresident of network technology maker Sandvine.
"Given that there hasn't been a decline in volume of file-sharing traffic, you could easily suppose that these are new people using Netflix. There are clearly a number of people who, for whatever reason, are not going to use file-sharing networks to access content and now they have another choice."
Rather than switching from using BitTorrent to download music and video files to consuming video via streaming services such as Netflix, users are simply spending more time online generally, and a growing proportion of that time is spent watching Netflix, Donnelly said.
Netflix's 29.7-per-cent share of Internet traffic represents a 44-per-cent increase from the last Sandvine report released seven months ago, when Netflix represented closer to 20 per cent of peak download traffic.
Real-time entertainment services, which in addition to Netflix includes other streaming video services such as YouTube, accounted for nearly half (49.2 per cent) of all North American Internet traffic during peak periods.
That figure is expected to reach as high as 60 per cent by the end of this year.
Netflix's foray into Canada, the report said, provides a case study for what Internet service providers (ISPs) can expect once the service expands beyond the United States and Canada.
Canada became the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company's first international market last September when it launched a streaming-only service in the country. Since then, more than 800,000 Canadians have signed on for Netflix, representing about 10 per cent of Canadian households with broadband connections.
That is a sign of things to come worldwide, according to the Sandvine report.
With the rapid success of Netflix in Canada, Internet service providers worldwide must plan for a future in which on-demand video is a large proportion, if not the majority of, Internet traffic.
The trend represents a growing challenge for Canadian ISPs who are spending billions of dollars upgrading their physical networks to handle the increasing bandwidth demands associated with greater online video consumption.
Canadian ISPs such as BCE Inc.'s Bell Canada unit and Rogers Communications Inc. recently fought a highly politicized regulatory battle over proposed usage-based billing policies.
While opponents (Netflix included) criticized such billing for placing arbitrary limits on the amount of data a subscriber could download each month before incurring hefty overage fees, while Bell and others have argued UBB is necessary to manage rising issues of network congestion.
"The fact is that the volume of traffic over the Internet grows exponentially," said Donnelly.
"It grows a lot, and it grows a lot every single year."
Source:montrealgazette
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