WATERLOO, ON – Over-the-top video provider Netflix has become the largest source of Internet traffic overall in North America, representing 29.7% of peak downstream traffic, according to the latest global Internet traffic report by Sandvine.
The Global Internet Phenomena Report: Spring 2011 is based on Internet traffic statistics from March 2011 voluntarily submitted by a representative cross-section of Sandvine’s customer base, which includes more than 220 Internet providers serving hundreds of millions of subscribers in more than 85 countries. Overall insights since the company’s last report in the fall of 2010 reveal a growing appetite for on-demand applications that it says will continue to drive data consumption and network quality requirements.
"The information and trends in Sandvine’s Spring 2011 Global Internet Phenomena Report, emphasize the need for innovative solutions to keep up with rapidly evolving consumer demands for content and connectivity”, said president and CEO Dave Caputo, in the report’s release. “The dramatic growth of Netflix and its impending global expansion are prime examples of a growing appetite for real-time entertainment. It is also important for fixed and mobile broadband providers to have real-time policy control capability, made possible by insightful business intelligence, in order to put sound strategic decisions into action."
Other major findings from the report include:
– Real-Time Entertainment applications consume 49.2% of peak aggregate traffic in North America, an increase of 60% from 29.5% in 2009. Sandvine forecasts that the Real-Time Entertainment category will represent 55-60% of peak aggregate traffic by the end of 2011;
– The continued growth of Real-Time Entertainment enables a seemingly contradictory conclusion: P2P filesharing is here to stay, at least for the immediate future, as evidenced by the marginal drop in share from 19.2% of peak period traffic in Fall 2010 to 18.8% in Spring 2011;
– In Latin America, social networking (particularly 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. P2P file sharing protocol BitTorrent 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.
Global Internet Phenomena Report: Spring 2011 is the ninth report in an on-going series of traffic analysis studies first issued in 2002.
