Around the Net
Netflix Boasts Biggest Bandwidth Use
- Venture Beat, Thursday, October 27, 2011 12:46 PM
Following several management blunders and disappointing third-quarter earnings, it’s nice to see Netflix get what could be interpreted as good news. According to the latest Sandvine Internet Phenomena Report, Netflix now creates 32% of peak downstream traffic -- making it the nation’s largest consumer of Internet bandwidth. For that honor, it beat out HTTP, YouTube and BitTorrent, which, along with Netflix, account for 64.4% of all network traffic nationwide, according to the report.
“Real-time entertainment services are the primary drivers of traffic, with especially heavy bandwidth consumption for music and video content,” notes VentureBeat. The report also highlighted the rapid shift of Internet traffic away from desktop devices such as PCs, to all other forms of Net-connected devices, including set-top boxes, game consoles like the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3, smart phones and tablet devices. As VentureBeat points out, only 45% of Internet traffic on fixed networks now goes to laptops or desktop computers, according to the report.
