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75% of Network Connections Not From Browsers
Trailwalker writes "An article at BigBlueBall.com states that 75% of web connections do not use a browser. IM and P2P applications are used instead." While surprising, this is probably more indicative of how instant messaging has been able to complement and/or replace email in recent times.
IM has less spam than e-mail!
How often do you get pr0n/anime/music/movies over http? That's what I thought.
My life's goal is to get a score of +3!
One would think that spam and email worms constitutes a significant portion of that 75%.
The World is Yours.
What about gaming? Many connections from that :)
This space is not for rent.
I would think that msblast makes up a larger amount of the applications with network connections. I work for an ISP and there a still many customers who are afflicted with that virus.
I don't even have an internet connection
Think about that. Most HTTP traffic is fairly light compare to average P2P, Mail and FTP traffic. But 25% That's a heck of a lot for one protocol. Sure it's not over 50% but HTTP is still king of the Net.
...to browse the web without using a web browser.
how many connections from THAT???
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Well,
My 4000 song lawrence welk collection just got found out....
I thought I was doing the music world a favor, renaming song , and artists like shaggy with welk tunes behind em...
Guess Ill have to go back to spam for a living....
I don't find this surprising at all... think about it... most people probably have 1-2 AIM windows open for each browser window, and sometimes have an internet radio or something else running at the same time.
Serously, the second AIM puts ICQ-like away messaging in, email is dead.
It's much more convenient to just start up a program, punch a few numbers, and see who is on for real-time conversations and get all the messeges they sent while you were away. Further, with the increased use of Webmail based email servers, it is becoming more and more inconvenient to check it... It's become rare to have a non-isp provided email account be POP3 by default.
Is AIM ready for the spotlight? Not quite... AIM, the popular one with teens, i'd say, still needs to work on privacy, logging, and message ability while someone isn't logged on. ICQ is a more perfected clinet, but the settings and UI are much too complicated for a novice.
Until recently, I only checked my email every couple weeks.. i'm on AIM almost constantly.
The article states that "76 percent of active Web surfers access the Internet using a non-browser based Internet application." I take this to mean not that only 24 percent of traffic is HTTP traffic but that 76 percent of people who use the Web use something else as well.
Seriously - how do they come up with this number? Are they packet sniffing the entire internet?
I'd like to know their method before I would worry about their conculsion.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'm more of a geek than the target audience of that IM site, but I hardly use the web either. I get all my news via RSS. News sites without RSS feeds basically don't exist for me. I've even written scripts to convert eBay and my stock portfolio to RSS.
I use the web browser mostly to buy things, now that I think about it. Which I don't do all that often.
So I would agree, most of the traffic out of my connection isn't from a browser either.
But that's to be expected, isn't it? First there's one way to use the internet. Then all these special application splinter off, and each one focuses on one thing. Then somebody comes along and unifies them again. Then they splinter again. Etc.
After 'bigblueball.com' gets /.'ed I think their 75% claim will change a little.
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein
Oh yeah, that's an authoritative source.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I am sorry, but IM is a pain in the ass when it comes to getting stuff done.
code code code, IM, code , IM IM IM, Debug, IM DeIMbug....
Does it even matter anymore?
The article states that 75% of users use non-browser applications to access the internet.
It DOES NOT say that 75% of the connections are made by non-browser applications.
There is a difference, and I blame the lack of any sober editors at Slashdot today for this getting through.
how do they come up with this number?
From the article: "Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, December 2003". More information on Nielsen's products may interest you.
If Nielsen's net ratings work anything like their TV ratings, then lucky families get paid to put a spybox between the cable modem and the home router, with full knowledge and consent of what's going on. I'd expect an airtight privacy policy; Nielsen has provided TV ratings for over a decade.
the article needs to be more descriptive about the process and what the criteria is. Well maybe the fact that some of those programs mentioned do anonymous and routine communications without the users knowledge/activation. How about the fact that I have my IM up all the time and just down keep a webpage up all the time. I am not using it all the time just online. But i use a lot more bandwidth when I surf. They should judge this by bandwidth usage. (which I admit can not say for certain they are or not doing, i think that some file sharing programs would pop up there too then)
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Putting statistics in terms of connections from unique users doesn't quickly mean the importance of these applications, and also usage patterns of internet users in general.
Also, Windows Media Player and Realplayer establish browser connections to their media homepages anyway; does it count as a browser connection? In most cases, it is not even initiated by the user (the user might be wanting to play MP3's).
What about e-mail? It is very important and widely used by everyone; but it doesn't even make the list!
thinking of a school.... they once did a network traffic tests and it was something like 76% was aim/icq (though i doubt icq) yim or msn. 4% online games (program games not web based). and around 20% web browsing. no were near surprising to me.
"Internet users spent an average of three hours and 37 minutes per month using Internet applications."
I don't mean to badger at statistics without seeing their complete methodology, but many people just leave their IM client connected. And don't WMP and RealPlayer phone home? So it seems hard to hold to numbers without specifying an activity which can more easily be linked with HCI time.
The truth is that IM and music players probably are the big draw for most people, which is the conclusion in article title ("Instant Messaging and Media Players are Primary Internet Applications"). Of course, hasn't the Internet always been a majority of activity not directly related to a web browser? Is this news, or a new (more realistic) perspective?
After reading the article, I noted that Windows Media Player is the #1 application accessing the internet. All I can ask is, why?
Why does a media player need to connect to a server so frequently? What information is it sending out? What good does Windows Media Player provide the end user, that it is taking up 34.43% of the web connections?
Make me your friend; my fans get +1 comment scores.
That's not quite what it says... only that connections 75% of the connections are not initiated by a browser. Protocol isn't really talked about. Perhaps they mean that 75% of the time, the User Agent is not a web browser, but rather Windows Media Player or some other thing. But then *those* connections can be activated by a web browser, right?
When two Winny (most popular P2P file sharing application in Japan) users had arrested as first arrestees on the end of last November, traffic through IX have decreased by 70%.
This doesn't make sense. Perhaps the genius technologists at Nielson assume that all Internet traffic is Web (or W-W-W) traffic. Ummm, no.
These kind of statements should tip you off that these people probably have no idea what they're talking about. If they can't even describe it in an accurate manner, how accurately have they gathered the results? This kind of data is meant for the PHB, but geeks know it's bunk.
What a bogus statement. Sure, I might believe that 75% of the connections on the Internet don't use a browser, but I damn well don't believe that 75% of Web connections don't use a browser. The World Wide Web and the Internet are Not the same thing.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Here
--- root@127.0.0.1
At least the article states Internet connections, while the submitter (or CowboyNeal) has translated this to "web" for some unknown reason.
I'm quite certain that most web connections still come from browsers, while internet connections can be from most anything.
Regards,
--
*Art
nuff said.
Life is not for the lazy.
...this is probably more indicative of how instant messaging has been able to complement and/or replace email in recent times.
How much http traffic is for email, and how much isn't?
About Nielsen//NetRatings Nielsen//NetRatings is the global standard for Internet audience measurement and analysis and is the industry's premier source for online advertising intelligence with its NetView, AdRelevance, @Plan, WebRF, LemonAd, MegaPanel and SiteCensus services. Covering 70 percent of the world's Internet usage, the Nielsen//NetRatings services offer syndicated Internet and digital media research reports and custom-tailored data to help companies gain valuable insight into their business. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com.
Since they only cover 70% of the world's Internet usage, how it be that 75% (76% from article) of [ALL] web connections do no use browsers?
- Gentlemen, start your hybrids!
Read the article with the mind set that "web surfer= Internet user"
Now you can understand what they mean. Sadly, if you use the Internet for ANYTHING the common media considers you a web surfer.
SSH, FTP, IM, anything, it's ALL web surfing according to them. No, it ain't right, but it's more like "Common knowledge" - remember the SNL gameshow?
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
It's an interesting problem, with no easy solution. Broadband ISPs could start using firewalls that block all incoming TCP SYN packets, but that's going to piss off a lot of people, and then what about UDP...? Whatever you do, there are going to be clever programmers working to get around it.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
The article doesn't seem to say, but do they include email as a non-browser based Internet appliaction? Seems odd to just ignore what is likely the most (or second most?) used application on the net.
Dude, you plagiarized my stuff.
0 27 381
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=79523&cid=7
How...weird.
Protocol isn't really talked about The 'web is definded as the part of the internet that uses HTTP, is it not?
Sure, maybe the majority of network traffic may come from other sources than the web, but this doesn't mean that the web plays any less of a part in most people's regular internet activities. On average, I can assume that most P2P connections occur somewhat dynamically (unstable, temporary, etc). For example, it is not uncommon for a single bittorrent download to require 20+ connections to other users. Since the connections of most home users are somewhat unreliable, this many is necessary. So of course this means more P2P traffic than that of http, but we have to keep in mind that what could have been retrieved with multiple P2P connections would only take one steady connection with a web server. And if IM traffic is measured by the connections between client and central server, well, that ought to be pretty many as well.
the link "Confessions of a Web Cam Girl" below the article seems to me much more interesting than the article itself.
How do you single out P2P from the rest? Just wondering because HTTP doesn't have to be on port 80, and all the Kazaa/whatever can be on various ports. As well, most of the P2P protocols seem to be descended from HTTP. (When I get a "dirty" DHCP IP address, it's sometimes fun to toss a web server on the targeted port to see what files people are requesting from the previous IP address owner. I just check the logs after a while.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Why are you babbling about traffic?!
The article said nothing of traffic.
RTFA and better luck next time.
Is that unambiguous enough?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I assume you aren't still advertizing "unlimited (SOME SPEED UP/DOWN) any longer?
It would be deceptive advertizing, and good grounds for a lawsuit from any customer, or all...
P2P has many non-copyright infringing uses, and don't count on the RIAA to win anything easily, if at all. Their paid-for lawmakers will will only get them so far before the cycle reverses.
Seems this site doesn't seem to understand what the web actually is. AIM/MSN/etc are not "web" programs at all. One can't be classified a "web surfer" without using a browser, that's what the web is!
;)
Besides that, the site only says that 76% of net users access the net using non-browser apps. Not one place does it ever say that the people using these apps do not also use a browser.
Just a little food for thought
According to a networking expert I know, games eat the most bandwidth since it requires nonstop upload and download stream. Where as Kazaa-ing will mostly just eat up the download stream.
Is this some BS, or is this for real?
...for the common man like STunnel, FreeSWAN, or OpenVPN, how long can it be before people are just using private networks between family and friends at home to do IM, P2P or even Windows File Sharing? I've moved in this direction already with my family and friends. All it took was a little of my time to set up SSH clients with Local and Remote forwards that my family and friends initiate connection to my server with. Then they just access the Jabber server I run or, the internal mail server using IMAP, or the recipe database I've created, etc... Since some of my friends and family are Windows bound, I've been able to get them to use the Exodus client for Jabber with cygwin SSH to communicate with me. We even share RDP and VNC sessions. So... what does this have to do with the article? I would argue that there are a good number of people out there doing more than just IM, P2P or web browsing and they are probably doing it via tunneling. It can't be long before this becomes a part of the OS (even for Windows) to allow people to share data in new and very secure/private ways. It's done wonders for the support I offer my friends and family too...
Un-news
These statistics may be derived by bandwidth alone in which i'd probably give it some credibility as video and audio streaming can be extremely bandwidth intensive (especially the former).
One 3 minute streamed video clip at 300 kbps may require as much bandwidth as 100 webpages.
Hmmm... Pie...
you know the other 25 precent of web connections is used to go to porn websites
How often does the average user's email client (read: Outlook Express/Outlook) check for new messages on the server?
In the same light, how often does IM clients check for new messages? Does it reuse the same connection, or initiate a new connection with the server? (I'm assuming its client->server, due to NATs, firewalls, etc).
Just because the client software is constantly requesting data does not make the software more popular. Statistics about *active* use (say, page hits, email messages, etc) would be more informative.
Wow, I'm active more daily than most people are in a month.
I wonder if this is because IM and P2P applications are left active all the time. In many cases running whenever the users computer is running.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
"An article at BigBlueBall.com states that 75% of web connections do not use a browser.
Huh? Last I checked, the Web was different from the Internet! You'd think people would figure this one out by now. Of course, if you're merely talking about HTTP traffic then I guess some P2P apps would be involved (gnutella uses HTTP to negotiate and download).
True. Also, isn't instant messaging implemented via UDP? If so, each line the user types would be a connection.
A 10 minute IM session would generate over 1000 UDP messages (both to and from the user).
A 10 minute web browsing session would generate something on the order of 100 TCP/IP connections (at most).
That means that if you browse the web for an hour and chat for 10 minutes, the "web usage" rating would say that you did 50% more Instant messaging than you did web browsing.
Does that seem like a fair measurement?
'three out of every four home and work Internet users...access the Internet using a non-browser based Internet application. Media players, instant messengers and file sharing applications are the most popular Internet applications.'
er...what about email? (many popular pop3/ imap mail clients can be adapted to use the InterNet, I am told)
ah! i get it - these 75% of users haven't migrated from uucp/ janet/ arpaNET for their mail yet
seriously though, what a crappy survey
If anyone else is thinking *they* might want to try non Internet email, there's a new kid on the block
('Access is available during peak
rate times at substantially higher rates ($20 - $32 per hour depending
on location). There is a membership charge of $30 per month (less than
$1 per day) to cover administrative costs.')
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Or HTTPS. I'd say it's more the part of the Internet that uses navigation by clicking links rather than typing URIs for a specific server. So if a new protocol were to come out that worked from a browser the same way, that'd also be part of the web.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
75% of web connections do not use a browser.
The article does not say that. It says that
So this offers hope to those who were afraid that the web would become synonymous with the internet. On the other hand, seeing a slashdot editor get the web and the internet confused, I'm not sure if I should keep my hopes up.
One of the worst examples was a poll that was done in BC in 1994 when there was a big fight over logging issues, and the environment movement was getting a lot of support.
There was a poll done, that asked if people thought that environmentalists were responsible for the sorry state of the logging industry, and most people said "no". The front page headline was:
British Columbians find Enviros Irresponsible
The correction the next day was a little article on page 2.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Is there anyone out there that doesn't use at least one of; email, ftp, irc, IM, streaming media, news or ssh outside of a browser at some time...
After performing an in-depth study of the article summary, I estimate that 24% of people don't do any of these things.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
75% of web connections do not use a browser
More like 100%.
IE speaks HTTP to a server, it renders the resulting data that comes back.
Opera speaks HTTP to a server, it renders the resulting data that comes back.
Mozilla speaks HTTP to a server, it renders the resulting data that comes back.
Grip speaks HTTP to a server, it renders the resulting data that comes back. (as CDDB entries)
wget speaks HTTP to a server, it renders the resulting data that comes back. (as file-transfers to a directory).
If it is web traffic, then by definition, it's HTTP traffic, and then BY DEFINITION, the application that's talking to the server is called a browser.
Now, the actual article ITSELF (Rather than the bad summary of it posted to slashdot) didn't actually say 75% of web traffic - it said 75% of INTERNET traffic. ANd *that* makes sense. The person writing the summary should have realized that the statement made was nonsense the way the summary prhased it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The "World Wide Web" is the virutal network that runs on the Internet comprised of hyperlinked-together pages. If you display the WWW, your application is a browsers.
Now, I don't doubt that a number of Internet users don't open IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera in an average day and only use AOL, e-mail, ICQ, and the such... but those people are not "Web" users, they're just "Internet" users.
I'm not quite sure what this article is trying to tell us... "Internet" and "Web" are not interchangable words.
He plagarized another article yesterday form somebody, click on his name to check history,
Weird is... an understatement. Granted, the plagarist's post is better-formatted than your original from September, but... wow. How does this happen? Who thinks this is a good idea?
(BTW, if anyone has trouble with the link, try clicking here... there was a stray space in the one above.)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Thats funny, I was just posting my project (WebP2P) to freshmeat.
The idea is to create a P2P network that actually runs using PHP pages as the peers... technically it would be "pure browser" since tha pages use http to communicate.
meh
Correction to the article headline and link text - The pr from Nielsen doesn't say what percent of connections are via non-web browser software: "Nielsen//NetRatings, reports that three out of every four home and work Internet users, or 76 percent of active Web surfers, access the Internet using a non-browser based Internet application." That doesn't mean that these same users don't use a web browser for the majority of their http connections, rather it says that 76% of active web surfers *ALSO* use Internet applications other than (as in in addition to) web browsers.
Where does the article say anything about connections? Do a search and you'll see the letters "connect" don't appear anywhere in the article except the title.
The article clearly and obviously states that it means 76% of internet users use applications that aren't web browsers. Any other reading is either illiteracy or trolling-I'd vote for the second in the case of the editors' insanely inaccurate summary.
This article is ridiculously confusing. First of all, it looks like they're saying that 76% of people who use the web also use other programs besides web browsers to get internet content. But it doesn't help that apparently "Internet" has a very particular meaning, which excludes email (otherwise email traffic would have figured in here somewhere) but also miraculously excludes the web, since "Internet Applications" are only used by 76% of web surfers according to this article. This means either that web browsers are not, in fact, "internet applications," or that 24% of web surfers surveyed have direct telepathic connections to the 'net.
Unfortunately, there's no better info available... The company's original press release is pretty much reproduced in its entirety, word for word, by bigblueball news. I hope that Nielsen's clients aren't actually paying for info like this.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I also work for an ISP. I too am in charge of an Allot NetEnforcer. I know exactly what you're talking about: peer to peer traffic is accounts for about a 40-45% of our network traffic, which makes it the #1 use of our resources. This makes sense because, honestly, does one really need a broadband connection to send e-mail or load a webpage? I'm not surprised that your customers haven't called. The fact is, they probably won't, unless you disable peer-to-peer traffic completely, because I think most people attribute slow connection speeds on the other user (which is probably the case 90% of the time) rather than the ISP (provided their other types of connections go quickly, of course.)
Something that I suggest you try is what we do: throttle p2p during peak hours (during the day usually) then leave it unrestricted during times of typically low activity (night). As both a devoute kazaa-lite K++ user and an ISP employee, I feel it's a good compromise.
As for your last statement, I tend to disagree. P2P software isn't going away. It's like trying to stop a mouse by plugging up the mouse hole. Things like the NetEnforcer aren't as dumb as a TCP port blocker, but they still have their flaws. The NetEnforcer is able to determine what service is running by examining the TOS bits of the IP headers of traffic. Usually, like port numbers, these don't change. However, I've always wondered what would happen if someone were to create a program that randomly cycled through the possible TOS combinations. My guess is that the connection would still work, but devices/applications like that NetEnforcer would be left clueless. And even if that approach didn't work, things like SSH port tunneling would. Much like the RIAA-IP-blocking versions of Kazaa, I think we can bet that the P2P software designers are going to react rather than roll over and die if what you're saying comes true.
-Grym
Internet users spent an average of three hours and 37 minutes per month using Internet applications. A page like a slashdot article containing some comments takes me more time to read (no internet activity in between) than to download. So, even if they could sniff all our data usage, it would not reflect our real time usage because of differing idle times for each application.
You have to remove the space that it auto inserted into that URL.
I hope you don't survive long enough to reproduce.
You're an idiot. There's an extra space between the last 7 and the 3. Since thinking is way too hard I redid the link below.
here
-- taking over the world, we are.
This post is true! It is a well known fact that the editors are themselves trolls. Why do you think they tolerate all the garbage that goes on at slashdot, it's because they like it! So, sacred jihad is the right way to go-fight fire with fire.
actually I got the fp with Mozilla Firebird
It's one thing confuses me about this submission. How is the fact that less connections are coming from browsers indicative of IM replacing email? That's a different app altogether unless you're using webmail. I'd think you could make more of a case for IM replacing IRC or talk. Sure there's some overlap, but really I think email serves a differnet need.
At any rate, it's a "good thing" people are finding other uses for their net connections besides just web surfing. The more the fully all the features of TCP/IP are used the harder it becomes for ISPs to "AOL-ize" our connectivity. For example, if we had this earlier we might not be cursed with so many broadand accounts with no upstream bandwidth. The only reason it came about was because the current systems were designed around the notion that most people would just surf and download.
Umm... What happened here? For most, if not all, of Internet history less than 75% of web connections have used a browser. I don't use either P2P or IM but of connections initiated from this site, there would still be far less than 15% that are http or https let alone a browser. Now that does not count DNS as a "connection" but does include FTP, Telnet, CVS, SMTP and quite a few others.
I'll be dammed if I can see the remark as "indicative" of anything except ignorance on behalf of the its maker.
How this got posted as an article I do not understand.
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
By TCP/IP connection count, there are more non-browser connections than from browsers. But browser connections are verbose, with each connection accounting for a lot more info delivered to the user. Non-browser software must make more connections for the same amount of info. So the ratios are skewed.
--
make install -not war
The other 75% of the people are telnetting to port 80 and entering the GET and POST commands by hand.
;)
Well, maybe not ALL of those people are doing that, but the cool ones are
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Until recently, I only checked my email every couple weeks.. i'm on AIM almost constantly.
Who wants to be checking their email 'almost constantly'? I prefer a world in which we all check our emails once or twice a day, max. How much of that communication is even worthwhile? It's like being stuck beside a telephone that won't stop ringing.
_khl
I went there and hit the "unhappy face" -- cuz it's just a bunch of fluff
75% of web connections do not use a browser
The article doesn't say that at all; in fact, it says very little. It says only that 75% of users use Internet applications other than a browser, including IM clients and media players. It states the obvious that there's more to the Internet than the Web. Irritatingly and confusingly, it seems to interchange the terms "Web" and "Internet".
The reason media players are on that list is because average Joe clicks on all 6 porno movies that are listed on each free porno page. That means 6 times the amount of requests for porn movies in WMP than sites in a browser.
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
Web connections, my ass. "Web" suggests HTTP, and HTTP is used primarily by browsers.
By and large, IM and P2P communicate on their own protocols.
Windows Media Player 34.43%. LOL. I don't even know anyone using WMP, mainly because it sucks.
http://archonon.sytes.net/
I recently blocked spiders/bots to my webservers and for a test redirected them to a counter script for a while.. the results were quite stunning.. several million hits EACH DAY! These were mostly just spiders that were identifiable from the user agent so the actual figure could be much higher with those sneaky bots that pretend to be IE or whatever.. so probably most traffic on the net is not even human! Still it keeps the traffic brokers in business.. ;)
I'm from Vietnam and I run a cyber cafe in Hanoi. Most of my customer are teenagers, the rest are foreign tourists and professional. Most of teens have a yahoo account but mostly for IM. A large number of them never use email. The problem for them is email is too formal as a communication tools.
If smoking dope was any good for you they'd call it brilliant!
Computers are pretty complicated. Smart people get them, stupid people don't, either 'cause they're too stupid or 'cause they're lazy. And that sucks. Thank you
The article is confusing because it does not define "active user reach". It's easier to understand in this 3 year old similar Neilsen study [PDF}. The table there makes it clear that "active user reach" refers to what percentage of the total population being studied (the "active users") are using the various applications.
The quote from the Nielsen analyst in the current article makes it clear that "active users" are Web surfers, which by definition are people who use browsers.
So the article says that 76% of the web surfers studied also use some other Internet applications, 34.43% of them use Windows Media Player, 20.27% of them use AIM, etc.
Note that this says nothing about what percent of the traffic any of that represents. It seems obvious to me that they cannot be counting email as an "Internet Application" for their survey.
Being Neilsen, they are only interested in applications that can serve advertising. "Reach" means what percentage of web surfers can be reached via advertising delivered through Windows Media Player, AIM, RealPlayer, etc.
Another study shows that 75% of porn doesn't come from websites...
Are they using http?
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I don't see how this stat is reliable. It is over 104% with just those mediums, not even including e-mail or browsers. Plus, media play connects to the internet everytime it is used, even if it is used locally, so it can tell Microsoft what you are watching (no not paranoid, it's a fact that MS admitted to). Propaganda BS, it seems like.
Look at the mail.yahoo.com login page. It generates a unique rsa key for each login - effectively enciphering all net traffic for the login sequence (via a touch of javascript). It also "free" as well, if you follow the links.
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
With those numbers in mind (53%), you might want to check out, what Microsoft has to say about information that is collected by Windows Media Player and MSN Messenger.
"75% of Network Connections Not From Browsers"
Does this count as a network-connection from a browser? Sure makes a lot of traffic, but on a 100MBit Network it's quite useable.
sh$ DISPLAY=remote:0 mozilla
I personally think that whatever "Nielsen//NetRatings" wants to say about the state of the internet holds about as much weight as what SCO has to say about the state of linux these days.
It's a bunch of worthless crap data, relabeled with marketspeak by some PR people who must think they're really cool right about now. Let's not support stupidity like that.
How on earth can one compare Windows Media Player, AOL Instant Messenger, RealPlayer and a WEB BROWSER!?
Granted, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player have limited built-in browser capabilities... but I refuse to accept that 75% of the idiots out there have been permanently trapped into these interfaces. In fact, I know it can not be so.
As far as I'm concerned, this just tells us what people spend most of their time doing - and that that is (unsurprisingly) something other than browsing the web.
Windows Media Player - 48,159 - 34.43%
RealOne/RealPlayer - 27,648 - 19.76%
I do not know whether to cry or laugh when I see that two media players are the no.1 and no.3 program to access the internet most. They are meant to play simple video and audio files, not display the latest news, advertisements and god knows what from MS and RealNetworks!! Dont make me believe all these connections are streamed media files. ;-(
use servers on IRC :p
their way too slow to be worth it though
(Sorry for being offtopic, but, hey, the whole thread is). This is part of a war against Slashdot. I think it's kind of extremist, but it's amusing anyways. Google the net for "anti slashdot".
It's saying 75% of _Internet_ traffic is not HTTP, as far as I can tell. Back in the old days most Internet traffic was SMTP, NNTP, and FTP. I'm not too surprised if SMTP still is a large part of Internet traffic.
The summary makes it sound like 75% of port 80 connections aren't from web browsers, which would be weird IMHO. (On the other hand, there are lots and lots of web crawlers/spiders out there, so I could believe this stat too, at least for an "average" site.)
Last time I checked HTTP is port 80, and POP3/IMAP aren't.
FYI, the web site is "anti-slash.org" and judging by the kind of forum postings they have, it's comprised of some pissed off 13-year-olds with too much time on their hands. They archive highly rated postings from slashdot.org and encourage their buddies to repost them as a way to dilute the value of Slashdot's forums. I notice they have archived three of my postings. This is of dubious legality; don't Slashdot posters own their postings?
Incidentally, the registrant is listed as follows, according to a GoDaddy.com whois search:
ID:0-776643-Gandi
Name:John Marriott
Organization:John Marriott
Street1:506 E Sherman St
City:St. Joseph
State/Province:Illinois
Postal Code:61873
Country:US
Email:marriott@uiuc.edu
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
The authors of the article clearly do not know the difference between the Internet which are all using as soon as we connect to our ISPs and the World Wide Web which is a linked set of pages of information.
How this simple fact could be missed detracts from, and also complicates, the information contained in the article. It actually makes it meaningless. But then obfuscation is often the reason for press releases!
I highly doubt that 75% of all web connections do not involve browsers. I know that curl and wget are neato, but 75% of all web connections? Nonsense.
On the other hand, saying that 75% of internet connections are not by browsers isn't news at all.
Just pointing out that "web" implies www which implies http or https and nothing else.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Referenced Nielsen article: 76% of browser users have used a streaming data client or an instant messaging client. (dull)
Hmm.
mt
I think you'd be surprised at how much of the traffic is DNS.
It's an attempt to waste mod points. It's from www.anti-slash.org.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Replaces an open standard messagin system for a closed one closely guarded by an international corporation?
Who are you? Bill! BILL! He is here!
Bill: you are a bastard.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Not everyone uses a browser to do email.
sendmail connections et al don't count as a
browser I would guess.
This needs to be brought to to the attention of of everyone wanting to break DNS by "Best guess(Highest Paid for)" resolving typo domain names ect... This may not refect the high percentage of DNS Traffic being for the WWW but it goes to show that the WWW isn't the end all be all of the Internet.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
The referenced article seems to say net, not web; I guess the moral is don't read the article, or you'll get confused :)
You can read more about it here
I think they're teasing us.
That Beowulf clusters weren't implicated.
The last thing the community needs now is some knee-jerk legislation rushed through congress restricting the number of machines in a cluster to (say) 1000.
Let's stay alert for any sign of this, people!
I WANT TO PUT MY PEE PEE IN YOUR POO POO HOLE
I WANT TO PUT MY PEE PEE IN YOUR POO POO HOLE
I WANT TO PUT MY PEE PEE IN YOUR POO POO HOLE
I WANT TO PUT MY PEE PEE IN YOUR POO POO HOLE
I WANT TO PUT MY PEE PEE IN YOUR POO POO HOLE
I WANT TO PUT MY PEE PEE IN YOUR POO POO HOLE
76 percent of active Web surfers access the Internet using a non-browser based Internet application. Media players, instant messengers and file sharing applications are the most popular Internet applications ... The top five applications are Windows Media Player, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger Service and Real Player.
As best I can figure, they are counting unique IP Addresses. Then they counted how many IP Addresses used each "application". 24% of the addresses did not use any of these applications.
I would guess that email does not show since most email clients talk to a server on the local network. The number of IP Addresses of the email servers that cross the internet are not significant enough to show on this report.
They do not distinguish if the connections for Windows Media Player and Real Player were for plug-ins or for stand-alone usage. Both types of media are often embedded in web pages. Windows Media Player is constantly attempting to call home because it is confused about a codec. Real Player calls home for new ad content. I am surprised that Acrobat Reader did not make the list, probably because it uses standard HTTP for communication.
They also did not mention the total population using IM: 20% AOL, 19% MSN, 12% Yahoo could mean only 20% of internet users use IM if every Yahoo IMer also uses MSN, and every MSN IMer also uses AOL. I know that is unlikely, but the statistics are useless for learning the total IM population.
The same reasoning applies to the Media Players: 34% WindowsMediaPlayer, 20% RealPlayer. What is the intersection? It is very likely that 34% of internet users like video; they all use WindoiwsMediaPlayer, and sometimes use RealPlayer because WindowsMediaPlayer cannot play the Real format.
The only valid statistic is that 24% of active IP Addresses did not use Media players, instant messengers and file sharing applications that do not use HTTP. And even that number is suspect because they have not stated that they excluded email, web, and web-crawling robot servers that communicate over the internet. Web servers may rarely initiate connections, but robots could account for a significant portion of that 24%.
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Using the number of unique IP Addresses is a very poor statistics. They did not mention how they captured the number of IP Addresses. We are behind a NAT, so we have 3 people using 1 IP Address. Most households with broadband use this setup. At companies using proxy servers, there could be thousands of people using 1 IP Address.
I agree that time used by each protocol could be a more useful statistic, but it would be difficult to capture. For example: I could request 10 web pages in one minute, or request the same web pages at one every 2 minutes. It still took me 20 minutes to read the pages. The first method would return time = 1 min; the second returns time = 18 min. A slightly better statistic would be number of requests, but that would be disrupted by web pages that have many graphics.
The only statistic that make sense is total bandwidth used per protocol. And that would be useless for learning the number of people using each protocol, which is the only number of interest outside the infrastructure community.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
No it doesn't. The article says that "76% of active web surfers" use non-browser applications. It doesn't say they don't use a browser. Admittedly the headline implies that, but the phrase "web surfers" indicates the opposite.
What would "75% of web connections do not use a browser" even mean? Do you think 75% of people are surfing the web with wget?
The rest of the usage must be porn! Its the only reason the interet exists is the first place. I know my first site would not have got any hits if its weren't for the "sex anal boobs teen thumbnails free xxx" in my headers (I miss search engines that actually searched meta tags). The interet has always been like the VCR. It started as a way to see more porn at home, and then legitimate uses were created as wives started asking questions.
Open Source Sushi
The number of IM connections is probably ridiculously small.
Why? Because when you're on IM, you've made one connection, even if you're on all day... as long as you don't disconnect at any point.
Your email client probably connects every time it needs email, but some IMAP protocol clients keep the connection idle.
Your web browser opens one connection per image unless it's smart enough to use HTTP/1.1 persistent connections.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
anyone who has looked at a sniffer trace of AIM could tell you why this is: it's the ads. I analyze netflow traffic for about 25000 users on a college campus, and the number one site for port 80 is ... you guessed it ... oscar.aol.com (or some such). watch aim run for a while; it's just spewing ad after ad after ad.
/. community, might recognize that im and p2p mean more than aim, but for millions of internet users (even if they aren't aol customers), they don't even know there are alternatives. [granted the other p2p's with the same model of ad splashing are prevalent, but nothing holds a candle to aim's market share]
the
exactly my point