Netflix & BitTorrent Eat Half The Internet

Sandvine reported today that Netflix traffic has increased nearly 50% over the past year, and now accounts for what is approaching one-third of peak-time North American traffic (30%) and one-quarter of daily traffic (22%).

Add the 22% of daily traffic that is BitTorrent, and the trend towards broad proliferation of smart mobile devices, and you realize that video and streaming content will very soon dominate.







Sandvine reports that "Real-Time Entertainment traffic is continuing its journey to network dominance, particularly in North America, where it represents 49.2% of peak period fixed access traffic. If this rate of growth is sustained, Real-Time Entertainment will make up 55-60% of traffic by the end of the year."

In Europe, about 33% of peak access is Real-Time Entertainment, while in laptop-dominated Latin America, P2P uploads are now nearly half the traffic.




And everywhere, people watched William and Kate Get Married.  In another Sandvine report, we find that Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) traffic doubled, and global video traffic in general surged to 26% above normal levels, peaking during the wedding ceremony itself.  Traffic on the social media sites Twitter and Facebook peaked 30% and 10%, respectively, above normal levels and local peaks corresponded with highlights of the wedding coverage.

Cable/fiber television operators, be afraid.  Be very afraid.  Ditto, corporate nets.