Netflix Isn't Swamping the Internet

itwbennett writes "Remember the Sandvine report from earlier this week that said Netflix gobbles up 30% of Internet traffic during peak hours? It needs clarification on a couple of important points, says blogger Kevin Fogarty. First, yes, Netflix traffic spikes during prime time, but only across the last mile. Second, ISPs underestimate what a 'normal' level of Internet use really is. 'When AT&T announced its data caps – 150GB per month for DSL users and 250GB for broadband – it called the data levels generous and said limits would only affect 2 percent of its customers. It turns out Netflix users take up an average of 40GB per month just from streaming media, according to a different Sandvine report (PDF).'"

Comments

Re:lol wut

[datapharmer]

They don't buy, they rent from limelight and level3. They used akamai before that as a cdn (and I think might still use it some). Between these 3 the backbone infrastructure is pretty well covered. If they really do make up 30% of peek traffic it is reasonable to imagine that netflix has localized storage of at least the most popular content at most of these nodes, and the fact that limelight specializes in video transfer (even before netflix) makes it even more likely.