Streaming represents 50% of Internet traffic

The latest report on Internet traffic published by Sandvine, specializing in networks, shows that the streaming represents a majority of bandwidth consumption today before P2P. The live video streaming on the Internet account represents 50% of the bandwidth on the Internet in North America, Latin America and Europe. This shows the usual changes of users, who are increasingly moving toward these services, rising well ahead of services such as BitTorrent (17.23%). However, streaming is not used for illegal practices, as the U.S. service broadcasting is Netflix movies on its own 29.7% of the bandwidth consumption in the United States during peak hours.

Sandvine particularly emphasizes the fact that in 2009 the stream was still only 29.5% of traffic, and considers that this figure should be around 60% by end 2011. This poses a particular problem for operators, who see the bandwidth consumption of their users dramatically increase with the democratization of the practice, the video streams are becoming bigger. The study also shows, stating that since late 2010, "consumption per user typical" in the U.S. increased from 4 GB to 7 GB per month.