Video streaming subscription service Netflix takes up more than one third of downstream Internet traffic during hours of peak use, new research on the subject says.
While the vast amount of data downloaded by users at home is impressive, mobile customers were also found to be generating some impressive traffic numbers. Sandvine said that YouTube and Facebook account for nearly 40 percent of mobile traffic taken together, with YouTube generating 20 percent and Facebook an almost identical 19 percent.
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During peak hours – the times of day that subscribers use the service the most – Netflix makes up an astounding 35 percent of Internet activity in its North American markets. The data, collected from research company Sandvine, covers the second half of 2014. It’s also why major Internet service providers have been hounding Netflix to pay for its share of bandwidth usage – which is one of the core arguments surrounding net neutrality in the United States.
Between Netflix and other video streaming sites like YouTube and Hulu – and social networks like Facebook and internet retailers such as Amazon – around 20 gigabytes of data is consumed by every North American internet user on a monthly basis. Netflix was also found to be responsible for nearly 10 percent of all upstream traffic during peak hours as well; this figure may confuse many, considering how the service is all about one-way video streaming, but the Transmission Control Protocol Netflix relies on to connect its serves with its countless customers generates enough acknowledgment packets to put a sizable dent in upload activity. In fact in some cases download activity can even be interfered with by the amount of upstream traffic that Netflix generates.
While the vast amount of data downloaded by users at home is impressive, mobile customers were also found to be generating some impressive traffic numbers. Sandvine said that YouTube and Facebook account for nearly 40 percent of mobile traffic taken together, with YouTube generating 20 percent and Facebook an almost identical 19 percent. Facebook has seen its mobile and desktop connections rocket upwards since September, thanks to a new autoplay feature that begins playing videos in the News Feeds of users automatically – a feature that has been controversial when it comes to Facebook users, with some welcoming the new feature while others finding it intrusive.
Mobile users were found to consume around 118 megabytes of data on a monthly basis. This is up from 2013’s figure of 102 megabytes a month, according to Sandvine.
This archive content was originally published November 20, 2014 (www.betawired.com)