Skype, YouTube Starting to Impact Net Traffic Loads

• Posted: Sunday, August 26, 2007
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: You Tube

New applications such as Skype and YouTube as well as file hosting services such as Rapidshare and Megaupload are starting to make an impact on network traffic, according to the latest study by German firm ipoque.

It reported that P2P traffic makes up anywhere between 50 and 90 percent of Internet traffic, with BitTorrent still the most popular P2P network, having passed eDonkey in last year's survey for the first time.

While the results need to be tempered by the fact that Ipoque is a vendor of traffic management products that it aims to sell to service providers wanting to control their P2P traffic, it has been invited to MIT Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference to present its findings later this month.

The 2006 survey largely focused on file sharing networks, but the 2007 edition will include statistics about applications such as Skype, Joost, media streaming and one-click hosting. According to its preliminary results, Internet TV service Joost does not yet cause the traffic volume many Internet providers fear, however the lower bandwidth Skype now generates up to 2% of the overall traffic in certain networks.

Media streaming services such as YouTube and one-click file hosting services like Rapidshare and Megaupload, which provide direct download links as a means to distribute content using ad-financed web server farms, have also seen a huge popularity surge, Ipoque reported.

However, BitTorrent is still the globally dominant P2P protocol, with a share of 50-75% of all P2P traffic. The traffic management vendor noted that eDonkey exhibits a regionally varying popularity, with shares between 5-50% of all P2P. And in certain regions other protocols have gained a significant importance. In the Baltic States, for instance, DirectConnect has a proportion of about 30% of P2P.

In last year's survey, ipoque undertook detailed data acquisition and analysis for the eDonkey and BitTorrent networks. The results showed a 20% and 30% share of pornographic content for BitTorrent and eDonkey, while the survey also confirmed that many current audio, ebook and movie titles are exchanged, the firm said. [Broadband Communities]

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