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Streaming Video Is 70 Percent of Broadband Use (recode.net)
An anonymous reader writes: Streaming entertainment is now the dominant form of broadband usage in North America. A new report from Sandvine says streaming accounts for roughly 70% of downstream traffic during peak times, and 65% of total traffic. That represents a doubling of video/audio streaming since five years ago. "Much of the increase comes from YouTube and Netflix, which already accounted for more than half of your broadband usage a couple of years ago, and continue to grow. But now those services are joined by relatively new entrants, like Amazon* and Hulu, which barely registered a couple of years ago and now account for nearly 6 percent of usage." Streaming doesn't take up such a big portion of traffic on mobile, but it still takes up more than any other type of traffic. It accounts for about 41% of peak downstream traffic, and 37% overall.
Considering most other web content is just downloading some text and static pictures, I'm surprised only 70% of downstream traffic at peak times is streaming video. I guess that goes to show how good compression on streaming video is.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
How much of this is actually just video advertisements? Without ad blocking software on im just spammed with video on every page. Moreover you have to sit through advertisements on many of the popular streaming services. I would be interested to know the total bandwidth involved as a percentage of total bandwidth.
Today Shaw internet went out on Vancouver Island for the longest period of time I have ever seen it down. I am willing to bet it was not a hack or a fiber optic problem that took down Shaw today. If we continue to use the net for entertainment purposes then it is obvious that the infrastructure will by necessity will need updating. Like our highway systems and everybody in a car there are going to be major traffic problems that will cost us billions in lost time waiting to get things done stuck on the internet or on the freeway.
The bandwith problems are not coming from slashdotting the way it happened once upon a time in the good old day. And they are certainly not coming from me downloading torrent isos of bsd and linux, my son in law downloads over 200 gig a month in movies I rarely get over 4 gig a month use out of shaw and that is with all of our household network use including my wifes work, my music uploads and downloads and my audio work. So yes it is movies and streaming entertainment that is causing the pipes to plug. Trouble is the plumbers at microsoft and crapple are hard at it putting in bigger pipes so the shit shows can stream everywhere and your toilet is now in your living room and real computers are in the bathroom going for a shit!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
This conclusion does not match with the extensive research of the movie industry that they are losing billions on illegal downloads of movies. Unless... as 70% is considered legal streaming they must be making twice the money on streaming than they lose on illegal downloads.