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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.
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.
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.
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!
Nope; they have you install software spyware onto your Windows computer, and it watches at least your IE. I'm not sure if it also watches other browsers, but when I tried it, it didn't seem to try to call home until I loaded IE up for a page that wouldn't load in Mozilla.
Why did I even install it? The "payback" was entry into a drawing I'm sure I'll never win. When I uninstalled it, it tried to call home once more. I blocked all attempts I saw, of course.
Oh, I wouldn't; since they're tracking what people do, and not just what televisions are receiving, I'm sure the government can easily make them hand over whatever information they derive in the interests of "national security," or more likely, the RIAA. The installer did say that some of the information gathered would be personally identifiable and that they were free to look at other stuff on my hard drives if they felt like it, could change their software at any time, etc.
- Submitted anonymously for obvious reasons.
You can differ, but I only on small occation get an ICQ spam; I've never gotten a spam on MSN, Yahoo, or AIM. And I've posted my ID's on various forums for the users to contact me.
On the other hand, I recieve many, MANY spam e-mails. I think anyone with an e-mail address has experienced lots of spam.
I run my own mail server, and I've got about 5 active users that have used the e-mail address for things. Friends, family.
Since 12/12/2003, my amavis-new/spamassassin/postfix machine has filtered out 7012 messages. That's 350 spam messages each day, for 6 mailboxes. It's insane.
So, it's cool. I'll let you differ all you wish, but I beg to differ your difference.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Dude, you plagiarized my stuff.
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=79523&cid=7
How...weird.
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.
Agreed. You should see the incoming access logs from my firewall. There are hundreds of attempts per week from random IP's which are hitting ports like 17300, 901, 35xxx, 6129, etc. which are known ports that viruses/worms use. It amazes me the number of unpatched Windoze systems out there. How does the buyer of a new PC get it online at home without catching 3 worms in the first 10 seconds??
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Another thing I see is people for some reason decide to reformat their hard drive and reinstall their Win XP within an hour they have blast because they don't have the patches again.
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
My apologies. That article sucks. In fact, it's damn near fraudulent.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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
"How does the buyer of a new PC get it online at home without catching 3 worms in the first 10 seconds??"
Maybe mirosoft needs to add a quick windows update check to the bootprocess? Ping home giving a list of installed updates, if theres any more critical than prompt the user to install now before anything else loads.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
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.
Yes, it would seem that's what they're trying to say. So what I feel really interested in is the apparent fact that 24% of people on the net do not use any sort of web application at all.
I don't use IM, but I've certainly had occasion to use Media Player.
They also skip the one piece of data that may have been of real interest to anyone but someone looking for an "emerging trend" to rape and pillage. What percentage of time do these people allocate to their IM client as opposed to their web browser. The simple fact that they use an IM client is pretty meaningless without knowing this.
The article also seems to be a bit rife with clueless confussion between the net and the web, using the words interchangably even when the distinction matters to their own point. A remarkable feat given how short the article is.
Which may be why there was no discussion about email, usenet and irc. Perhaps they consider these as normal browser functions or something? Their language certainly supports the conclusion that they think the browser is the standard net tool, as opposed to web tool. I can go a week or so using the net pretty heavily without ever accessing the web at all, and yet not using any of the "net" tools that have attracted their interest either. I get the feeling that this is even possible would surprise them.
Which may be why they seem to have trouble distinguishing the difference between things that originate locally and those that originate from the net, because to them if you don't have a browser loaded the implication is that it didn't come from the net.
Well, what can I say? If you're in London and you get an IM from someone in Pretoria and you don't realize that you're on the frickin' net you must think the other person is a little pixie who lives inside your monitor and is writing messages to you by scrawling on the backside of the screen with his little magic crayon or something.
My experience is that if there is any cause for confusion it works the other way around. Grandma thinks of the computer as an internet device and assumes everything is net.
"No grandma, you don't need an internet account to look at your pictures. They're inside your own computer (the little pixie takes care of them). You only need an internet account to look at the pictures on other people's computers. That's right. That means you don't have to be afraid to miss any calls while you're playing solitaire either."
KFG
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!
Microsoft's solution would probably require loading Internet Explorer, ActiveX, and DCOM first, though, at which point you're hosed anyway. ;)