Sandvine: 44% of Web Traffic is P2P

Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications are hogging up most of the bandwidth used on networks operated by North American ISPs, so says a new study from Sandvine.

According to Multichannel News, Sandvine claims that for the month of May, P2P file sharing generated 43.5 percent of Internet traffic; followed by web browsing, at 27.3 percent; and streaming media, at 14.8 percent. The amount of P2P traffic is up from 41 percent a year ago.

The data for this study came from a survey of several “leading” service providers, none of which were named. Bandwidth usage data, meanwhile, was collected at the subscriber access network, accounting for traffic not routed through peering points.

Sandvine has been in the news lately for its role in the Net Neutrality debate. Sandvine devices were reportedly used in Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent traffic, and the company recently released FairShare, a network management tool that lets ISPs manage their network traffic (which, as Janko pointed out, could slow down all bandwidth-intensive video applications).