This downward spiral is confirmed by a recent Sandvine report which reveals that BitTorrent traffic is now responsible for 11.3% of all U.S. Internet traffic during peak hours, compared to 17.3% last year. Although these numbers don’t take into account that absolute traffic has increased, it’s clear that there’s little to no growth in BitTorrent use.

However, this decline appears to be unique to the U.S. When we look at other regions a different pattern can be observed.

In Europe for example, BitTorrent traffic still accounts for 20.32% of all Internet traffic during peak hours, while eDonkey adds another 9.39% to the P2P total. During the last 18 months the share of P2P traffic nearly quadrupled, and this increase is even larger in absolute traffic.

According to Sandvine, the absence of legal alternatives is one of the reasons for these high P2P traffic shares.

“We see higher levels of P2P filesharing than in many other regions, at least partially due to geographical licensing challenges that restrict the availability of legitimate Real-Time Entertainment services.”

A similar trend is visible in the Asia-Pacific region where BitTorrent now accounts for nearly half of all upstream traffic and 27.19% of the aggregate Internet traffic during peak hours. The P2P streaming service PPStream and the Chinese file-sharing client Thunder add another 6.36% and 4.62% to the P2P total.

So, while BitTorrent traffic is stabilizing in the U.S. as its share of Internet traffic drops, the P2P protocol is still hugely popular in other parts of the world.

Sandvine’s suggestion that a lack of legal alternatives is one of the explanations for this seems plausible. As we reported earlier this week, the latest episodes of series such as Game of Thrones are widely pirated on BitTorrent in countries such as Australia and the Netherlands due to airing delays.

In the U.S. on the other hand, the availability of legal content has flourished in recent years. To illustrate this, Sandvine reports that one-third (32.9%) of all downstream traffic during peak hours is now generated by Netflix subscribers. In addition, Hulu has doubled its share in the last year to 1.8%.

The above seems to suggest that due to these alternatives, people are less inclined to pirate.

The MPAA is slowly starting to realize that consumers are not all out to steal content, they simply want to consume.

“I believe it’s critical to find solutions to the challenges facing both these consumers and the people who create the content. Because at the end of the day, this discussion is about consumers and by consumers who love TV shows and movies. They want to be able to access them quickly and safely online,” the MPAA’s Marc Miller wrote yesterday.

True words, but Miller continues with a classic misunderstanding. “No business in the world can compete with ‘free’,” he notes.

As it turns out, the entertainment industry can definitely compete with free, up to a certain point. The crucial part is to remove all the artificial barriers. Release delays for TV and movies drive people towards BitTorrent piracy, just as DRM is an incentive to pirate rather than a deterrent.

The challenge for the entertainment industry in the years to come is not to invent ways to stop piracy but to make it less attractive, by ensuring that consumers get timely access to the content they want independent of their location, and on demand.

Source: BitTorrent Traffic Booms Due to “Licensing Challenges”

The overall conclusion we can draw from the data is that in Europe and North America BitTorrent traffic continues to grow spectacularly, something that may in part be attributed to the shutdown of LimeWire. The Gnutella network (used by LimeWire) on the other hand has all but disappeared.

The bandwidth usage patterns during peak hours in North America reveal that a massive 52% of all upstream traffic can be attributed to BitTorrent at these times. This is up from 34% in 2010, and since it’s a relative comparison, the absolute traffic consumed by BitTorrent has risen even more.

The BitTorrent percentage of downstream traffic in North America lies at 10% of all Internet traffic during the busiest time of the day, up from 8% last year. Netflix is the absolute king in terms of downstream traffic here, accounting of nearly 30% of all traffic during peak hours.

Traffic generated by the Gnutella protocol (used by Frostwire etc.) in North America has nearly vanished after the LimeWire shutdown. Last year it was responsible for 11% of upstream traffic and 2% of downstream traffic during peak hours. In 2011 it is no longer among the top 10 downstream applications, while the upstream traffic is stuck at little over 2%.

In common with North America, BitTorrent also remains the most used file-sharing protocol in Europe. In fact, the surge in peak hour traffic compared to 2010 is even more pronounced here.

Bandwidth usage patterns during peak hours show that nearly 60% of the upstream traffic in Europe can be attributed to BitTorrent during these times. This has doubled compared to last year when it accounted for ‘only’ 30% of the upstream traffic.

Similarly, downstream traffic during peak hours went up as well, rising from 8% last year to over 21% in March. With upstream and downstream traffic combined, BitTorrent tops the list of most used ‘applications’ leaving HTTP (including cyberlockers) in second place with 18%.

Whether there’s a direct link between the LimeWire shutdown and the increase in BitTorrent usage has yet to be seen. This may explain the fall of Gnutella coinciding with the rise of BitTorrent in the North America. However, in Europe Gnutella was already virtually nonexistent last year, and here BitTorrent traffic has risen even more sharply.

While keeping in mind that Sandvine might benefit from overestimating the percentage of P2P traffic because they sell traffic shaping applications, the above data shows that BitTorrent is still going strong in North America and Europe. The relative share of BitTorrent traffic increased on both regions, and since the overall Internet traffic has grown as well, the absolute increase is even greater.

Source: BitTorrent Traffic Surges After LimeWire Shutdown

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: BitTorrent Still Dominates Global Internet Traffic

In one of the class action suits that were brought about from the long-running incident, Comcast has now agreed to settle, meaning those affected may be eligible for compensation.

About two and a half years ago, reports surfaced on what appeared to be the throttling of BitTorrent connections by Comcast. The throttling, first discovered by Rob Toplowski, was confirmed by TorrentFreak, and was first reported in August 2007. Other news agencies picked it up later, especially after tests by the EFF and Associated Press confirmed events and included reports that other network based activity was also affected.

Comcast long-denied any wrongdoing, but a leaked memo revealed that the company went as far as instructing its front-line staff to lie about the issue. Then the FCC got involved and things deteriorated. At a hearing at Harvard, Comcast packed the venue with people they bussed in, but it didn’t stop the BitTorrent throttling practice being termed a ‘hacker technique’.

Eventually, some assurances were made, and the FCC ordered Comcast to stop using Sandvine. Meanwhile lawsuits had been filed. One of these, Hart vs Comcast of Alameda, attained class action status, and there is now a proposed settlement.

Comcast has agreed to put $16M into a fund to pay BitTorrent users that were inconvenienced by the ‘network management’.

The downside is the size of the settlement. If you qualify, you can receive a maximum of $16, yet still Comcast refuses to accept it did anything wrong. The administrators of the settlement have set up a website to deal with questions about the case which can be found at www.p2pcongestionsettlement.com

It’s not hard to imagine that some customers will feel this doesn’t go far enough, and undoubtedly the discussion on this topic will continue. For the affected Comcast users there is still time to decide how to proceed – the deadline for claims is August 14th 2010. Meanwhile, network neutrality remains a pipe dream for most people.

Source: Comcast To Compensate Throttled BitTorrent Users

Since then, we’ve seen a couple of dozen reports, all with a totally different outcome. Some estimate that P2P traffic represents approximately 50% of the total traffic, while others go as high as 85%, or as low as 20%. The overall consensus seems to be that there is little consensus, or is there?

We think we might have spotted a trend, not so much in the data, but in the companies that publish these reports. Most Internet traffic research is conducted by companies that offer traffic shaping and broadband management solutions. Cachelogic, Ipoque, Sandvine, they all sell (or sold) products that help ISPs to manage their traffic.

Consequently, it is not a big surprise that their presentation of the results is often a little biased. After all, it is in their best interests to overestimate the devastating effects P2P traffic has, and convince ISPs that they need to throttle these awful bandwidth hogs.

Or as Sandvine co-founder Dave Caputo puts it: “Bulk bandwidth applications like P2P are on all day, everyday and are unaffected by changes to network utilization. This reinforces the importance of protecting real-time applications that are sensitive to jitter and latency during times of peak usage.”

In Sandvine’s report we see that P2P represents less than a quarter of all downstream traffic, and even less during peak times. Web traffic is most dominant and online media streaming sites take up nearly 16%.

On the upstream side, P2P traffic takes up 61% of all traffic (the black makes it even more scary), followed by web-browsing, tunneling and VoIP traffic.

Interestingly, the amount of bandwidth that is transferred on the Internet has more than quadrupled since the first reports came out a few years ago, and it is likely to quadruple again in only a few years. Unlike Sandvine suggests, throttling is not the solution. Investing in the network is.

Source: ‘Shocking’ 61% of all Upstream Internet Traffic is P2P

Since then, things have gone from bad to worse for Comcast, as their customers started to realize that this ISP wasn’t giving them what they paid for. As a result, Comcast are now being sued and annoyed users formed a coalition to challenge the company to try to claim compensation. All of this is on top of a FCC hearing which deemed that Comcast uses ‘hacker-techniques’ to interrupt BitTorrent traffic, techniques which are employed via the traffic management ‘solution’ from Sandvine. Essentially, the Sandvine system allows Comcast to inject forged reset packets into BitTorrent transfers which makes seeding impossible – good news for ISPs who don’t want to give their customers the bandwidth they paid for, but bad news for BitTorrent, and even worse news for supporters of Internet neutrality.

However, it is the very fact that Sandvine allows ISPs like Comcast to disrupt their customer’s activities which prompted the recent Federal Communications Commission hearings. The FCC warned Comcast that it will not allow it to disrupt internet traffic, which is of course a major concern for other ISPs considering investing in the Sandvine system. According to a G&M report, it is this hesitancy over net neutrality issues, coupled with problems major telecoms companies are experiencing when trying to refinance their debts, that have hit Sandvine hard. A survey by financial services outfit Canaccord Adams suggest that the top 40 global communications companies are all currently extremely wary over capital expenditure.

After achieving astronomical growth of 42,000% in just 5 years, Sandvine is really feeling the pressure as on the Toronto Stock Exchange its stock fell a massive 42%, to a low of $1.55. The company already predicted lower performance and revised its revenue estimates back in December 2007. Unfortunately these predictions were still too optimistic as the company has announced that the actual revenue this year is likely to be a further 20% lower than the revised figures. Sales for the first quarter will be $8.2m, an 88% drop on the previous year while full year revenue is expected to be around $80m, down from the December 2007 prediction of $110m.

All this adds up to an annual growth of 15%, versus last year’s growth of 132%.

At best, that means annual growth of just 15 per cent, compared with 132 per cent a year earlier.

Dave Caputo, Sandvine’s President and Chief Executive Officer said in a statement: “We believe that the delays have come about for a variety of reasons, ranging from unique customer-specific circumstances to economic conditions, making operators pause before executing on their approved budgets. We can’t dictate when customers make their decisions, just influence whether they choose Sandvine – and we remain as confident as ever in our ability to do that.”

With BitTorrent developers hard at work creating Sandvine-busting code, time will tell if Mr Caputo’s confidence continues into 2009.

Source: BitTorrent Throttling Company Sandvine Sees Sales Down 88%