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Maturing Net Grows More Slowly

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-like-a-tree dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has an article covering the slowing growth rate of Internet traffic." From the article: "Growth rates in some territories was staying high, said Mr. Mauldin, at 76% in Asia and 70% in Latin American but even these were down on 2004. Currently the amount of traffic flowing between nations is approximately one terabit per second. If growth rates hold up this is likely to hit three terabits per second by 2008. Much of the growth over the last few years has come about because of the rise in the popularity of file-sharing that encourages people to swap and share large media files, said Mr. Mauldin. "

13 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. How about instead of.... by AviLazar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    swap and share large media files, said Mr Mauldin. "

    She just says "swap and share large files"

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    1. Re:How about instead of.... by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Insightful

      She just says "swap and share large files"

      I'm pretty sure that the majority of traffic really is large media files, as in, the media being audio, video or even disc media images.

    2. Re:How about instead of.... by AviLazar · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Except it implies that is the only purpose of P2P, which continues to spread the stigma that P2P is only for sending such files. And when people think of "media files" they think of movies, music, copyrights, pirating, bad bad bad little hackers in their momma's basement stealing from those poor movie artists.

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    3. Re:How about instead of.... by FLAGGR · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So wait, you mean instead of downloading media files off p2p your downloading cd keys? Well son they don't take up much space, so they don't count.

      It's the truth, I'm sorry. Movies are gigabytes, and I have friends that download them like crazy. It surprises me that the traffic in these terratories is only 1TB, I have friends that go through more than that in a week of file sharing.

      P2P is used for stealing stuff. Plain and simple. Sure, maybe you (I doubt it, but maybe) use it soley for legal purposes, but 99.99999999999% don't. Do I think it should go away? No, I'm greedy. At least I admit it though. Tell the truth, you downloaded the latest Brittany Spears album didn't you?

    4. Re:How about instead of.... by AviLazar · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Her statement implies that all P2P is used for is to send movies, music and games which are considered (for the most part, and by the majority population) illegal. I do not disagree that sending a movie w/o permission is illegal, but I disagree that is the sole purpose of P2P. She needed to clarify her statements, because her lack of clarification made a big statement. That is my problem.

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  2. Might not be true... by Sheepdot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd be interested in how things like BitTorrent and ISPs using software to cache P2P traffic has helped in this regard. The amount of bandwidth that might have been otherwise used may have increased, but due to slimmer protocols and better distribution methods, the amount of traffic may have appeared to have grown at a slower rate.

  3. Re:What's up with the bits? by eMartin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bits are the things being transfered. Not Bytes.

    A byte is a measurement that refers to the space needed to store 8 bits.

    If I send someone 8 shoes, would you suggest that I refer to it as 8 feet (or 96 inches) of shoes?

  4. Re:Is P2P traffic really THAT high? by Grayputer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Guys, Sharing media files may not mean P2P. I hate to say it but it is possible to email a couple of meg picture of the kid/grandkid nowdays. With email like gmail/hotmail/... allowing attachments in the multimeg range, the odd photo or sound bite times a few million people can add up.

    Think camera phone ...

  5. Slow but steady growth, then by joshsnow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, as machines get more powerful (mores law) and end-user bandwidth increases it becomes possible to do things that weren't possible before. Things like streaming HD video on demand with no interruptions or loss of quality, downloading a multi-cd linux distro in less than 60 seconds etc, VoIP etc.

    This could lead to an increase in people doing things which weren't previously possible and larger file sizes as powerful machines can process more data.

    The upshot of that will be slow and steady growth of internet traffic.

  6. Assumptions by bchapp · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How can you assume it is because of file sharing? As more people moved to broadband, websites and uses for the internet started getting WAY more complex. Free streaming news video, Java games, VoIP, Flash, all the new PC games, etc... These are the things that are using the bandwidth. P2P has been around for years and people have been sharing movies for years.

  7. Re:Is P2P traffic really THAT high? by dividedsky319 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    There's so many more millions of users that don't do large file download/uploads then do, and I think that the total bandwidth of all these people logging in, checking e-mail, browsing the web, etc is a lot more substantial then any "large large media files" shared amongst a select few.

    Couldn't it just be the fact that files in general are getting larger? 10 years ago, how many 1 gig files were out on the Internet to download?

    Nowadays, look at all the huge files out there... movies, music (look at archive.org's collection of music), pictures, flash websites, etc... Everything is bigger. Getting back to your original point, whether it's p2p or straight http download, these files do account for a LOT of the bandwidth out there. My college professor told me that in the Napster days, their bandwidth was always at 100% utilization until they installed packet filters. I'm sure that a large percentage of University bandwidth does go to this type of thing...

    Getting back to my original point, since a larger portion of the population has access to broadband internet, the average file size is able to get bigger. I feel sorry for anyone stuck using a 28.8k or 56k modem nowadays.

  8. Re:Is P2P traffic really THAT high? by PhreakOfTime · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You are wrong actually. You failed to realize what the overall point of this was, and would rather attach your own mistrust of journalism(not necessarily a bad thing) to it.

    From TFA; Currently the amount of traffic flowing between nations is approximately one terabit per second

    So yes, P2P network are what make up a majority of this traffic. It is a gross misunderstanding of the facts to think that when you send a picture file to your granparents 2 sates away, or have your home page defaulted to MSN, or browsing to sites that are located mainly in your country of origin, that it somehow adds to the traffic Between countries.

    Do you see the difference? Im trying real hard not to be confrontational here...

  9. Re:Conflicted... by Have+Blue · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You don't think they took that into account? Slowing growth does not necessarily imply imminent zero or negative growth.