BitTorrent Continues to Dominate Internet Traffic

Written by Ernesto on September 01, 2007 

A recent analysis of the latest P2P trends wordwide shows that BitTorrent is still the most popular filesharing protocol. BitTorrent traffic is still on the rise and responsible for 50-75% of all P2P traffic and roughly 40% of all Internet traffic.

BitTorrent Continues to Dominate Internet TrafficP2P traffic stats always cause quite a bit of controversy. In 2004 several respectable sources were reporting that BitTorrent was responsible for 35% of all internet traffic. This was probably a huge overestimation at the time, today this figure sounds more realistic.

Ipoque reports in a preview of their 2007 P2P survey that BitTorrent is generating between 50-75% of all P2P traffic. P2P traffic is responsible for 50%-90% of all Internet traffic which means that BitTorrent traffic is generating somewhere between 25% and 65% of all Internet traffic.

However, there is quite a bit of regional variance in the use of P2P applications according to Ipoque: “eDonkey exhibits a regionally varying popularity with shares between 5-50% of all P2P. In certain regions, other protocols have gained a significant importance. In the Baltic States, for instance, DirectConnect has a proportion of about 30% of all P2P traffic”

Ipoque reports that all P2P traffic is still growing. Joost is not yet posing a threat to ISPs, but media streaming services and VoIP applications show significant growth. For example, Ipoque reports that Skype generates up to 2% of the overall traffic in certain networks.

It is probably good to know that this Internet traffic research is often conducted by companies that offer broadband management and optimization solutions. It is in their best interest to overestimate these figures because they design the traffic shaping applications that help ISPs to manage their precious bandwidth.

The 2007 P2P survey will be presented at Technology Review’s Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT, more details later.

Previously: Jamendo: Download Thousands of Free and Legal Music Albums

Next: BitTorrent Brings Evil Villain Back from the Dead

11 Responses

1 Sep 01, 2007 at 19:36 by Section8

very interesting

2 Sep 01, 2007 at 22:41 by S N

“P2P traffic is responsible for 50%-90% of all Internet traffic”

That almost sounds like a blind guess, they haven’t exactly left a lot of room for precision. At least they can’t be wrong…right?

3 Sep 02, 2007 at 00:20 by Marty

This is self-serving crapola. SwarmCast isn’t even mentioned. Can a site called “torrent” be indiscriminant? No. And this piece proves it: Negative Digg

4 Sep 02, 2007 at 01:03 by John

How come there are never any articles about USENET?

I use Newsdemon.com and their system is far easier to use than any of the bt stuff.

5 Sep 02, 2007 at 01:54 by quartex

@#5 John;

newsgroups aren’t p2p.. this site is about filesharing.

oh.. and.. the first rule of newsgroups..

6 Sep 02, 2007 at 03:43 by anonymous coward

TORRENT freak. Need I say more?

7 Sep 02, 2007 at 05:44 by d6

@John.

STFU about the NG’s.

8 Sep 02, 2007 at 13:23 by mapi

” 4 Sep 02, 2007 at 01:03 by JohnQuote John

How come there are never any articles about USENET?”

TORRENTfreak.com
——-

9 Sep 02, 2007 at 17:12 by Johnny Walker

So we need to up our infrastructure to handle this bandwidth…

10 Sep 02, 2007 at 20:36 by RagSoul

Bitorrent FTW!

11 Mar 16, 2008 at 06:59 by bigballs

gotta love p2p

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