The overall conclusion we draw from the data is that BitTorrent, and P2P traffic in general, is still dominant in all geographical regions. In North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific, P2P traffic is responsible for the vast majority of all upstream traffic. The percentage of downstream traffic is significantly lower, thanks to the streaming video sites that have gained popularity in the last years.

Despite the global nature of P2P there are some striking differences in the preferred applications and protocols that are used. We’ll discuss the various trends and statistics below, starting with North America.

P2P in North America

BitTorrent remains the most used file-sharing protocol in North America, and the total amount of P2P traffic is still very significant. Sandvine’s research reveals that on an average day, 53.3% of all upstream traffic can be attributed to P2P applications. P2P is less dominant on the downstream side. It is currently at 13.2%, following real time entertainment (45.7%) and web browsing (24.3%).

The bandwidth usage patterns during peak hours are slightly different, but still a massive 34.31% of all upstream traffic can be attributed to BitTorrent at these times. The BitTorrent percentage of downstream traffic lies at 8.39% during the busiest time of the day.

What’s further noteworthy is that the Gnutella protocol (used by Limewire, Frostwire etc.) is still fairly large in North America. It currently lies at 11.18% of upstream traffic and 2.12% of downstream traffic during peak hours. In most other parts of the world Gnutella has vanished completely.

The normalized aggregate of all traffic (up/down) during peak hours puts P2P traffic at 19.2% during the first months of 2010. Interestingly, this is up from 15.1% in 2009, which shows that P2P traffic is growing strongly, not only in absolute numbers but also as a share of total Internet traffic in North America.

Overall, it can be concluded that P2P traffic is still on the rise in North America, with BitTorrent being the dominant protocol.

P2P in Europe

In common with North America, BitTorrent also remains the most used file-sharing protocol in Europe. The report doesn’t give any exact stats, but roughly 40% of all upstream traffic and 10% of all downstream traffic can be attributed to P2P applications on an average day.

Bandwidth usage patterns during peak hours show that of 29.97% of the upstream traffic can be attributed to BitTorrent during these times, versus 8.29% of downstream traffic. PPLive, the popular peer-to-peer streaming video network, also has a significant share with 11.76% of all upstream traffic and 4.41% of downstream traffic during peak hours.

Strangely enough, Sandvine categorizes PPLive as real-time entertainment rather than P2P file-sharing.

In Europe, the normalized aggregate of all traffic (up/down) during peak hours puts P2P traffic at 11.0% during the first months of 2010. This is down from 22% in 2009, which indicates that P2P has lost half its share of the total Internet traffic there.

The relative downward trend of P2P traffic during peak hours does not have to mean that the absolute traffic has gone down as well. What is clear, however, is that relative to other traffic sources P2P has decreased in Europe, while it has increased in all other regions.

P2P in Latin America

Latin America is the only region where BitTorrent is not the preferred protocol to share files. Even though BitTorrent has a pretty decent market share there also, Ares is the most used file-sharing protocol. Overall, P2P traffic is huge in Latin America.

On an average day, 73.3% of all upstream traffic can be attributed to P2P applications. P2P is less dominant on the downstream side. It is currently at 23.1%, following real time entertainment (35.2%) and web browsing (28.3%).

The bandwidth usage patterns during peak hours of the day show that 11.91% of all upstream traffic can be attributed to BitTorrent at these times. This is dwarfed by the 54.74% Ares is credited for. The BitTorrent percentage of downstream traffic lies at 6.80% during the busiest time of the day, compared to 12.98% for Ares.

What is further noteworthy is that eDonkey is still fairly large in Latin America. It currently lies at 6.29% of upstream traffic and 1.82% of downstream traffic during peak hours. In most other parts of the world eDonkey has vanished completely.

The normalized aggregate of all traffic (up/down) at peak hours puts P2P traffic at 36.7% during the first months of 2010. Interestingly, this is up from 31.9% in 2009, which shows that P2P traffic is growing strongly, not only in absolute numbers but also as a share of total Internet traffic in Latin America.

We can conclude without a doubt that Latin America is the winner when it comes to the share P2P has of overall Internet traffic.

P2P in Asia-Pacific

BitTorrent is the most used file-sharing protocol in Asia-Pacific, where P2P has a traditionally high market share. The report doesn’t give any exact stats for this region, but roughly 60% of all upstream traffic and 25% of all downstream traffic on an average day can be attributed to P2P applications.

The bandwidth usage patterns during the peak hours show that 37.63% of the upstream traffic can be attributed to BitTorrent, versus 16.91% of downstream traffic.

PPLive and PPStream, two popular peer-to-peer streaming video networks, also have significant shares with 18.83% and 11.06% of all upstream traffic respectively, and 7.90% and 7.14% of downstream traffic during peak hours.

In Asia-Pacific, the normalized aggregate of all traffic (up/down) puts P2P traffic during peak hours at 25.7% in the first months of 2010. This is up from 8.4% in 2009, which indicates that P2P is still increasing its share of total Internet traffic there.

As can be seen from the table below, at the busiest time of the day BitTorrent has the largest market share of Internet traffic in Asia-Pacific compared the other regions.

In conclusion, we can say that Sandvine reveals some intriguing statistics, with the overall conclusion that BitTorrent and P2P in general are still going strong. Although there are regional differences, BitTorrent is responsible for a significant share of total Internet traffic in all regions. That said, we have to keep in mind that Sandvine might benefit from overestimating the percentage of P2P traffic because they sell the traffic shaping applications.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

According to a report from Xinhuanet, China’s State Administration of Radio Film and Television has taken action against 17 sites it claims violated various regulations, including the publishing of horrific, violent or pornographic content, and operating a video site without proper approval. None of the sites appeared to have been warned or shuttered due to piracy issues.

One of the sites that has been warned, VeryCD, is China’s largest eDonkey indexing site. In operation for around 5 years, it claims to link to more than 30 terabytes of data. VeryCD also operates a service known as MP3! which aims to be the world’s largest index of MP3 files, which would understandably attract some copyright action.

However, a visit to VeryCD appears to show the site pretty much intact and packed with links to the latest movies, music, games and software. So, it appears the site was warned, rather than banned. Details are scarce, what might it have been warned about if it is not related to copyright infringement?

Of course, pornographic content is available on eDonkey, that is one option. Another possibility lies in the list of complaints about the various sites – there is one which reads “spreading video programs that violate national regulations”. VeryCD actually created their own version of eMule, which has been downloaded more than 30 million times. Could that be the cause of the warning?

Whatever the problem, unusually for a file-sharing site, it wasn’t piracy.

Via SHD

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Spain’s Brigade of Technological Investigations claimed that the site was illegal and should be closed. Just under a year ago the case was heard, but sadly for the entertainment industry, the court ruled that the case against Sharemula should be dismissed. It said that neither the site nor administrators had operated illegally by offering links to copyright works, since they had not done so for profit or commercial gain.

However, the entertainment industry – including but not limited to Columbia, Disney Company Iberia, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner, Universal, Paramount, Sony and MGM, did not accept the ruling and appealed the decision.

Yesterday, the Provincial Court of Madrid ruled that the entertainment industry has no case against Sharemula, and since it has broken no laws, the case should be dismissed. This dismissal is final and cannot be appealed.

The court rejected all allegations that were made by the entertainment industry and concluded that indexing eD2k links (or torrent files) can not be seen as copyright infringement (pdf in Spanish). Sharemula’s main purpose is to index links, and they are not responsible for where these links go according to the court decision. Whether or not Sharemula makes profit is irrelevant.

“The hearing confirms the position of the defense that linking to P2P networks does not constitute a criminal offense,” wrote David Bravo, a lawyer in the case, noting that Sharemula did not store any copyrighted material. The site simply links to files that are hosted elsewhere, on computers of P2P users.

It is on this same premise that The Pirate Bay claims to operate legally. With upcoming cases against The Pirate Bay and Mininova in Europe, this decision is very welcome for p2p-site administrators.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Initially, ShareConnector’s host had refused to shut down the site stating correctly that offering links is not a crime. However December 2004 saw ShareConnector and another site, Releases4U, raided by the FIOD-ECD, resulting in the seizure of equipment and the arrest of 8 people. At the time, BREIN director Tim Kuik explained they were done waiting: “Our patience was up, after which we went to the authorities” he said.

According to P2PNet, Kuik, going for the jugular, asserted that the ShareConnector admin, Adi, should get up to 4 years in jail as he hid behind ‘false reasoning that illegal files are actually hosted on different servers and that the actual exchange doesn’t take place on their own servers’, which is, of course, a completely and utterly false assertion on Kuik’s part.

Eventually, after taking nearly 2 years to come to court, the result for BREIN and the FIOD-ECD was a disaster. The admin of ShareConnector was found completely innocent and just a couple of small fines of approximately $350 were handed out to the admins of Releases4U for uploading copyright material. The FIOD-ECD failed to provide any evidence to prove ShareConnector was involved in copyright infringement nor enough to prove that either organization was criminal in nature.

December 19th 2006 saw the triumphant return of ShareConnector, around 2 years after it was shuttered by the police but the return was not to be permanent. Not content with accepting that a criminal trial had taken place at which Adi and ShareConnector were found to be completely legal, BREIN resorted to the tactics it knows best and has had most success with – common bullying.

On Monday November 5th 2007, representatives from BREIN knocked on Adi’s door and threatened him face to face with potentially financially punishing civil action. On November 12th 2007, ShareConnector shut down for good.

The sad message on the site’s homepage now reads:

Last Monday the guys from BREIN visited me at home to convince me to close ShareConnector or else they will start a civil proceeding with a claim. Of course, this does not mean I agree with their point of view, it’s just that I can’t afford taking any risks.

As of today, November 12, 2007 I decided to close down. If there is anything new to report, you will be informed.

Thank you for all your support and understanding.

Next on the FIOD-ECD hitlist are OiNK’s seized servers. They’re likely to find that the situation is exactly the same as it was with ShareConnector, i.e no copyright materials were stored on it, so it’s not easy to see where they will succeed against OiNK where they previously failed. There is no offense of ‘facilitation’ under UK copyright law.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

However, a ‘new’ anti-piracy technology is claimed to have arrived in town, one which will not focus on traditional file-sharing networks but will target Usenet. The makers of the system acknowledge that trying to shut down Usenet in the way that BitTorrent and eDonkey sites have been shut down in the past, is totally not an option. There are thousands of newsgroups with millions of people sharing content with others almost anonymously and even the anti-piracy company says that Usenet is virtually impossible to regulate. Not a good environment for anti-piracy enforcement. So how does it work?

Apparently, TriMark is a “state-of-the-art one of a kind encryption technology” which will be used to track content made available on Usenet. It’s believed it’s a type of digital fingerprint embedded in files which can uniquely identify the original purchaser of the content, usually audio tracks. The claim is that the identification code maintains it’s integrity, despite copying or ripping. TriMark will then scan newsgroups for content that contains these embedded security codes. It will then supposedly identify the original purchaser of the material who will be pursued for damages relating to the claimed lost sales from every illegal copy spawned from his officially purchased copy.

Just this week it was revealed that some iTunes tracks contain the personal details of the person who downloaded the track, prompting privacy concerns. Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, “At a minimum, many would have appreciated it if Apple had notified them in some conspicuous way. Even after the recent media attention, it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of iTunes customers still have no idea that their names and email addresses are embedded in these files.” It’s unclear if people purchasing TriMark ‘protected’ tracks will be informed that their details are included in material they purchase.

The system is destined to roll out in 2008 when it is expected to make zero impact on the amount or type of material shared on Usenet.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

TorrentFreak readers will already be familiar with the Swiss anti-piracy company Logistep who partnered German games publisher Zuxxez in tracking down hundreds of file-sharers in the UK alleged to have uploaded the game Dream Pinball. These actions were preceded by massive legal action against thousands in Germany, costing the tax payer many millions. At the end of our article we warned that Italy would likely become a target for the next actions. VedoVa_NeRa, an administrator of Italy’s largest file-sharing forum, p2pforum.it, has picked up on this story;

“In a case that’s bound to strongly affect the way Italian Internet users’ privacy is safeguarded by laws, a notorious recording label from Germany, Peppermint Jam, has sent 3636 recorded mails to as many file-sharers “found” guilty of uploading some copyrighted songs (by Mousse T, founder of the label, and other artists in the Peppermint rooster: Warren G, James Kakande, Colin Rich) on such P2P platforms as eMule, eDonkey and BitTorrent.”

The letters, sent by law firm Mahlknecht & Rottensteiner, demands that alleged file-sharers remove songs on the Peppermint Jam label from their shared folders. As in the previous German and British cases, the recipient of the letter must then agree to pay a ‘fine’ of 300 euros, to be deposited into the lawyers bank account before May 14th 2007. According to the documents, non-payment will result in civil and/or criminal charges being brought.

As with the other cases, the settlement amount demanded far outweighs the cost of the original product. Indeed, VedoVa_NeRa reports that every user in these cases has been accused of sharing just one specific song. That’s a 300 euro ($400) ‘fine’ for ONE song. Additionally, the whole thing is being rushed through – once the demand letter is received, just a single week is allowed to accept the charges and pay the settlement amount – the same strategy employed by law firm Davenport Lyons in pursuing the alleged ‘Pinball Pirates’ in the UK, instilling a sense of panic in the recipient which the lawyers hope will result in rapid settlement.

VedoVa_NeRa also gives some background to the cases;

“The letters follow the last year’s ruling of the Court of Rome which compelled Italian ISPs to disclose users’ sensible data in behalf of the law firm handling the interests of Peppermint Jam. The attorneys have, so, come into possession of the physical names and addresses matching the IPs that an unorthodox (let’s call it so…) first phase of “investigation” – involving the infamous Logistep software for monitoring filesharing networks – had detected as engaged in the uploading of the Peppermint-copyrighted songs. The strange thing is that the Court of Rome has ruled the disclosure of private data relying upon “evidence” found in a way that is not contemplated by current Italian laws.”

Indeed, there are also serious questions to be answered in respect of the methods that were employed by Davenport Lyons to convince the English courts to force ISP’s to give up their customers personal details.

Anyone affected by these legal actions should head over to P2P Forum Italia, where they are giving support to anyone who has received one of these letters.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

On the LimeWire Blog we read: “With several developers using Kubuntu on their development workstations we thought it was about time to officially support Ubuntu and provide packages for the growing Ubuntu user community.”

LimeWire is by far the most installed filesharing application. LimeWire is installed on 18.3% of all Windows PCs according to a report from Digital Music News, runner-up eDonkey is only installed on 3.3% of PCs. The market share of LimeWire is only expected to grow now it’s available to the ever growing Ubuntu community.

The latest LimeWire Beta for Ubuntu can be found over here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The report is based on data supplied by BigChampagne and PC Pitstop. BigChampagne is a company that tracks online media, it also provides provides Billboard online music charts. PC Pitstop gathers data by “inspecting” the computers of users that try their free online virus / spyware scanners. The data used in this report are collected from Windows registry and table entries of 1.5 million PC’s through these online diagnostic tests performed by PC Pitstop.

The results. The percentages in the table indicate the install base of the P2P applications:

In the report we further read that the once almighty “Kazaa family” is now only installed on 1.3% PCs. Newcomers like FrostWire and Pando are included in the report for the fist time with a 0.2% and 0.3% install rate respectively.

As said before, the usability of these figures are doubtful. Here are a few concerns. First of all, install rates do not equal usage. The fact that someone installed a P2P client does not mean that they actually use it. So the report can’t say much about the popularity of a filesharing network or application. They do not make these claims, but the way the data is presented is a bit misleading, to say the least.

For example, uTorrent is by far the most used BitTorrent client. Over 50% of the peers in an average BitTorrent swarm use uTorrent. It could be that uTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline are installed on almost an equal number of PCs, but that the BitTorrent mainline client is hardly ever used. For instance, novices may start with the mainline client, but move on to better BitTorrent clients later on.

Another remarkable point is the uTorrent data collection for this report. uTorrent doesn’t install itself, and even the installer doesn’t use the Windows registry. So how did they come up with these statistics on uTorrent then?

It is also funny to see mIRC in the top 10 of most installed filesharing application because it is so much more than this. Most people I know use mIRC for other purposes than sharing files.

The concerns raised here show that “power” is not always in numbers. They might have collected data from millions of users, but is this really valuable if you have no idea if they actually use the application? A survey among 10.000 users where you actually ask if, and how often they use these applications is probably more useful.

And on a final note, people who want to read the report, but don’t want to pay $195 might want to try Google’s backdoor. Doubtful statistics, doubtful security.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

There is no reason to believe that BitTorrent traffic has decreased. On the contrary, today, there are at least 3 popular BitTorrent sites among the 1000 most popular sites on the internet, and even more in line to enter.

But on the other hand, there are more p2p networks that continue to grow, and new video streaming sites, that cause a lot of traffic. So is it fair to say that BitTorrent is still responsible for 35% of all internet traffic?

The famous Study

Let’s start of with the original study that reported that BitTorrent was causing that much traffic.

The study by Cachelogic reports the following (June 2004):

This indeed means that BitTorrent accounted for 33% of all internet traffic in the first half of 2004.

However, there is some geographical variation.

P2P traffic in 2005

Now let’s compare this data with a more recent study by Cachelogic (January 2006):

This study reports that p2p traffic continued to grow, even relative to the other internet traffic. Januari 2006 p2p traffic acounted for approximately 71% of all internet traffic.

However, the same study shows that the marketshare of BitTorrent decreased. It seems that the eDonkey network took over the lead in most countries.

If we take a look at the US for example, we see that BitTorrent accounts for about 30% of all p2p traffic. If we assume that 71% of all internet traffic is p2p related, “only” 21% would be caused by BitTorrent. On the other hand, more than 35% of all internet traffic in the US is generated by the eDonkey network.

This means that eDonkey is generating significantly more traffic than BitTorrent. This is quite surprising. In general most people believe that BitTorrent is bigger than eDonkey. For example, the respectable filesharing news site Slyck reported this week:

Although BitTorrent would soon become the largest file-sharing network in terms of bandwidth consumption, eDonkey2000 never faded away.

However, it seems that eDonkey is generating more traffic than BitTorrent in most countries. Take the p2p market-share in China, Taiwan, and South-Korea for example, three countries with the most broadband subscribers apart form the US.

China: 50% BitTorrent / 50% eDonkey
Taiwan: 41% BitTorrent / 57% eDonkey
South Korea: 5% BitTorrent / 92% eDonkey

In Conclusion

The latest p2p traffic analysis by Cachelogic doesn’t give a definite answer to the question how much percent of all internet traffic is generated by BitTorrent. It is unlikely that it is as high as it was in 2004. To reach 35% mark, BitTorrent should be at least responsible for 50% of the p2p traffic, and it isn’t.

My guess would be, based on the p2p traffic graph that BitTorrent is responsible for approximately 35%, eDonkey for 45%, and other networks for 20% of the p2p traffic. This would mean that BitTorrent accounts for 25% of all internet traffic, and eDonkey for 32%.

However, this analysis is based on data that was gathered in 2005, so it is likely that the percentages are totally different today. Not only the market share of the different p2p networks, but also the rise of video-streaming may affect these statistics. Youtube for example indexes over 45 terabytes of video.

“one third of all Internet traffic” might still be very close to reality, but we should use this catchy phrase with caution, and be aware of regional variation.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.