Netflix + YouTube Consume Half of Internet Traffic

Netflix and YouTube dominate over half of downstream Internet traffic in North America, according to a new report released by Canadian Internet monitoring firm Sandvine.

Downstream traffic is data that goes from a source to a computer, and Netflix’s share of that is 31.6%. YouTube comes in second at about 18.7%, up 9% from the first half of this year. Sandvine’s report also said that Hulu and Amazon, despite big efforts to catch up to Netflix in video delivery. It is possible that Hulu, or Amazon, or any of the providers that lag far behind Netflix, are much more efficient at delivering Web video signals, and that somehow Sandvine’s numbers drastically underrepresent their real usage numbers. Could be, on the other hand, these numbers have been pretty consistent for awhile.

The increased dominance of streaming services has also lessened the impact of peer-to-peer traffic and video piracy. BitTorrent accounts for around 4% of North American downstream Internet traffic, compared with 31% five years ago.

The mobile numbers from Sandvine’s report tell a bit of a different story. YouTube controls the largest portion of data, at nearly 17.7%. Facebook follows in a close second, about 2% behind.

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