P2P responsible for as much as 90 percent of all 'Net traffic
By Eric Bangeman
| Published: September 03, 2007 - 09:00PM CT
P2P traffic is dominating the Internet these days, according to a new
survey from ipoque, a German traffic management and analysis firm.
ipoque's "preliminary results" show that P2P applications account from
anywhere between 50 percent and 90 percent of all Internet traffic. The
final survey results are not yet available and will presented at the
Emerging Technology Conference at MIT later this month.
Leading the way is BitTorrent, which has surpassed eDonkey as the P2P
protocol of choice. During the last year, BitTorrent accounted for
between 50 percent to 75 percent of all P2P traffic, with eDonkey
coming in second at between 5 percent and 50 percent. The wide variance
in the figures is due to local preference, according to ipoque: in some
parts of the world, eDonkey still reigns supreme when it comes to P2P
traffic.
When Skype went offline for a couple of days last month due to a "perfect storm,"
the outcry was loud and furious. ipoque's data shows why: Skype is
responsible for as much as 2 percent of traffic in some areas, despite
the fact that it is not terribly bandwidth-intensive.
ipoque's data appears at odds with that of Ellacoya Networks, a company that makes deep packet inspection gear. The company said in June
that P2P traffic accounts for just 37 percent of North American
traffic, compared with 46 percent for HTTP traffic. Of that 46 percent,
over a third consisted of streaming video, à la YouTube.
Despite the differences in how the traffic is broken out, ipoque and
Ellacoya's data both illustrate the degree to which users' desire for
video is affecting the Internet. It seems safe to assume that much of
the P2P traffic reported by both firms is video. Combine that with the
surge in traffic to YouTube and other video sites, as well as the
official upcoming launch of Joost,
and it paints a picture that some ISPs will find disturbing: demand for
high-bandwidth applications like video is increasing. That's why ISPs
are so interested in deep packet inspection and other traffic-shaping tools.
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