Slashdot Mirror
Netflix Dominates North American Internet
nairnr writes "Accounting for 29.7% of all information downloaded during peak usage hours by North American broadband-connected households in March, Netflix Inc. received the title in the latest Global Internet Phenomena Report released by Sandvine Corp. on Tuesday.
In its ninth such report, Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine found the amount of data consumed by users streaming television shows and movies from Netflix's online service exceeded even that of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technology BitTorrent."
Since Netflix uses almost 30% of the whole North American traffic during peak hours, they should really improve their technology. Most of the traffic is in peak hours. Instead of sending individual streams over the internet to every customer, they could develop some kind of protocol which could be used to broadcast all the streams to everyone at the same time. To make sure they don't clog the existing internet lines, they should lay down their own lines. Then they have full control over the infrastructure too. Broadcasting so many different streams probably doesn't work, so Netflix could instead start showing specific programs at certain times and people would tune in at those times to watch their favorite shows. For example once a week Netflix would show episode of every tv show and maybe movies at certain times and days. Since they own the infrastructure too, Netflix could stop worrying about all the different devices and just sell a product you put in your living room and use it to watch Netflix.
29.8%
;)
I kid, sort of.
As a snail mail Netflix user, I'll point this out: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a fleet of federally owned Grumman LLVs driving down residential streets and laden with DVDs.