Legal content rules: real time entertainment tops file-sharing in North American traffic

For the first time in history, legal content offerings were responsible for more internet traffic than file sharing, according to Sandvine’s yearly analysis of global spring internet traffic. In North America at least. A special places is reserved for movie streaming service Netflix, that on its own, is now responsible for most of the downstream traffic (29,7%).

Earlier, Netflix already accounted for the largest portion of the evening internet peak. This year is the first that the movie service accounts for the largest slice of the downstream traffic pie of the entire day. Bittorrent still rules the upstream traffic however, with 50,2%.

Europeans are heavier net users than Americans, with a median monthly usage of 14,7 GB (compared to a median usage of 7 GB in North America). As the European market consists of so many different regions with language constraints, Sandvine struggled to identify trends for European internet use. However, the real time entertainment category is gaining at the expense of web and P2P traffic (which is high in Europe, with 30,1% in the evening peak hours).

A spike in global traffic was caused by none other than Prince William and Kate Middleton exchanging their vows. Oh how centuries of tradition and high tech blend seamlessly… This, according to Sandvine, is one of the many pieces of anecdotal evidence that streaming is growing as a medium for watching live events.

Read the entire report here.