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.

Comments

SPAM and Worms

[Moderator]

One would think that spam and email worms constitutes a significant portion of that 75%.

msblast

[jbplou]

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.

Re:msblast

[harmonica]

I think that it is our work as computer-scientists and tecnitians to educate everyone we can

Most people don't want to know. It has nothing to do with laziness, but there's only so much time that they're willing to spend on computers.

I'm not sure if there's a solution unless the program / OS part of a computer is more or less read-only (some pre-installed applications, and that's it).

Re:msblast

[Compenguin]

Sometimes people get blaster while they are doing updates. I reinstalled on a box for a legit reason (hard drive went bad) and there were tons of updates and as I was updating I got hit by msblast.

Subject line is misleading

[Rick Richardson]

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.

Nielsen

[tepples]

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.

Re:Email is on the way out....

[TiMac]

AIM isn't very formal either....I wouldn't dream of IMing someone regarding a job interview, or a professional deal, etc...but I agree for informal communication, for the most part. Email's paper trail also has niceness about it though, but I suppose if MS has its way, Emails will be DRMed too. :)

What are people using Windows Media Player for?

[Aens]

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?

Re:Email is on the way out....

[globalar]

"email is dead"

It might be broken, exploited, less sophisticated, and maybe even not as convenient as IM, but it's still at least as ubiquitous. Also, IM has a lot of conventions which make it often times (not all times) less professional or even communicative. For example, IM stresses ways to shorten words but not necessarily make things anymore clear (or more developed). It's a lot like a phone in many ways. And sure we use the phone a lot - to varying degrees of success.

Email is just becoming a mainstay of many people's life. And it is very accessible - it really is like electronic mail (it has many mail conventions) and people seem to respond to its simplicity well. Also, the art of writing a coherent sentence, proof reading it, and then choosing a better word or phrase is much more suited to email.

I just hope I didn't prove my ignorance of these things in this post ;)

With the advent of VPNs...

[Trolling4Dollars]

...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...

The article says nothing like that

[ericspinder]

76 percent of active Web surfers, access the Internet using a non-browser based Internet application.

I am taking that to mean in addition to using a web browser. Basicly what Big Blue Ball (a site on IM)is saying that 75% of people on the net use IM.

Re:Less spam

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

My views on deadaim are pretty simple: When a program sucks so massively bad that theres a market in creating addon programs ot make it suck less, you shouldn't use the program at all. I'd rather just use irc, or gaim if I need contact with aim members.