After more than four years during which peer-to-peer (P2P) applications have overwhelmingly consumed the largest percentage of bandwidth on the network, HTTP (Web) traffic has overtaken P2P and continues to grow. Presently, as a result of streaming audio and video in Web downloads, HTTP is approximately 46% of all traffic on the network. P2P continues as a strong second place at 37% of total traffic. Newsgroups (9%), non-HTTP video streaming (3%), gaming (2%) and VoIP (1%) are the next widely used applications.
Breaking down application types within HTTP, the data reveals that traditional Web page downloads (i.e. text and images) represent 45% of all Web traffic. Streaming video represents 36% and streaming audio 5% of all HTTP traffic. YouTube alone comprises approximately 20% of all HTTP traffic, or nearly 10% of all traffic on the Internet.
“The popularity of browser-based video such as YouTube is having a significant impact not only on overall bandwidth consumption but also on the distribution of application traffic on the network,” said Fred Sammartino, vice president of marketing and product management at Ellacoya. “The way people use the Internet is changing rapidly - from browsing to real-time streaming. We expect to see new applications over the next year that will accelerate this trend.”