Netflix now "the king" of North American Internet traffic

[steve2470]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/netflix-now-owns-almost-30-percent-of-north-american-fixed-internet-traffic.ars

Metered billing and broadband caps be damned—consumer hunger for on-demand applications and video has put Netflix way out in front when it comes to data use. According to the Sandvine company's latest Global Internet Phenomena report, the online video company now accounts for 29.7 percent of all peak time wired network download traffic in North America.

That represents a 44 percent increase over Netflix's share of data deployment in 2010.

"Netflix is now the unquestioned king of North America’s fixed access networks," the study concludes. And Sandvine's measurements of total traffic averaged over the full day indicate that the online video provider has even outpaced BitTorrent as the top data dog on North American wired systems. Netflix has a 22.2 percent share, as opposed to BitTorrent's 21.6.

Divided opinions

But despite P2P filesharing's "marginal drop" in peak traffic data share from fall 2010 to spring 2011 (.4 percent), Sandvine doesn't think that BitTorrent will disappear from the online landscape any time soon.