Down from 37% back in 2007, and data suggests traffic pattern shows signs of “either persistent congestion or, more likely, evidence of widespread provider manipulation of P2P traffic rates.”
Arbor Networks, which sells subscriber traffic management equipment to ISPs, has released the results of a new study which concludes that P2P traffic is down to roughly 15-20% of all North American traffic.
That’s down substantially from the 37% of all North American traffic P2P reportedly consumed back in 2007.
It took daily average traffic fluctuations of 40 North American consumer & regional ISPs and concluded that not only is P2P traffic down, but that its cyclical inverted traffic pattern suggests “either persistent congestion or, more likely, evidence of widespread provider manipulation of P2P traffic rates.”
Notice in the images below how P2P traffic peaks at 6am and then decreases till around 4pm when HTTP traffic reaches its peak.
See how the two peaks are clearly inverted from one another?
Regardless of whether or not ISPs are manipulating P2P traffic, the important thing to observe here is that file-sharing traffic is only responsible for at most 20% and as low as a mere 8%. With some ISPs clamoring for bandwidth caps, throttling, and other technical measures to adress P2P traffic, it seems as though they’re already doing a fine job of managhing network congestion on their own.
Stay tuned.
The traffic that flows through my connection has dropped because a good chunk of it is private BT sites. I cap my ED2K traffic as well, so the average traffic has gone down for me. You have to think about how much p2p traffic is going through rather than, ‘yeah, I got a torrent today, so these stats are wrong!!!eleventyoneone’
Plus, as already mentioned, direct downloading has become increasingly popular these days anyway (Rapidshare anyone?) so it makes sense that p2p traffic in North America has been dropping recently. I actually don’t buy the argument that it’s because of network management actually. The drop reflects people using alternative means to getting content more than likely.
Well, its not exactly suprising that the percentage of the network used by torrents goes down when internet use is the highest-the work day. High volume torrenting is usually done 24/7, while being slowest during the heavily congested daylight hours.
Yeah uh I am using P2P (ed2k/torrents) at double the rate now that I was using them last year lol legal services will never be as good they cannot serve niche audiences like myself.
Love all these authoritative comments which are absolutely devoid of facts. The only thing I know for sure is that I’m using torrents just as much as I was last year – perhaps even more now, and I don’t envisage myself reducing that usage at all in the next year.
same same ,, itshidden vpn
I dont think you know what you are talking about here. these comments make no sense. the p2p scene is not dead and almost everyone still uses the torrents
Illegitimate P2P traffic only exists because people can’t get the content they want at a price they want. Some consumers have unreasonable expectations, and some content providers also have unreasonable expectations.
After years of consumers bucking the system two things have happened:
1) consumers have realized that if you don’t pay for your content then those who were making it will stop making it.
2) Businesses have realized that unless you provide what people want at a price they think is fair then you will be ignored.
P2P is not the tool it once was. Many company’s are providing legit downloads and lots of people would rather download legal content. Company’s have wised up and have met many of the demands of todays consumers. P2P is almost dead in many circles. Its boring, its a hassle and it can be dangerous for many reasons. This all adds up to less traffic for P2P.
The thing we need to be careful about is that the record companies will point to this and say that their anti-piracy campaigns are actually working. Are they? I don’t know.
Did anyone think to note that with websites like Pandora.com around and the introduction of iPhones to todays handheld junkies that infact there is no longer a high demand for mp3′s?
I have since purchasing an iPhone 100% haulted downloads because I can listen to any song I want( not on demand) but that genre is open to me anytime anywhere just because I create a station that plays songs that sound or other people listen to that listen to song X.
Also the Ipod Feature has been all together become next to useless besides the very few songs i can’t find on pandora, being local bands that you can only get via there CD’s because there not popular enough to be on torrent sites yet.
In the last few months, I have dropped nearly all P2P, and gone back to direct downloads… If I’m looking for an “old” file I will occasionally go back to torrent, but even then, I wont open it without connecting to ItsHidden VPN first…
Ha ha, use ItsHidden myself…