[LINK] The YouTube effect: HTTP traffic now eclipses P2P

[Roger Clarke]

[Comments embedded]

The YouTube effect: HTTP traffic now eclipses P2P
By Nate Anderson | Published: June 19, 2007 - 09:46AM CT
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070619-the-youtube-effect-http-traffic-now-eclipses-p2p.html

In the Internet traffic race, P2P used to be way out in front. For 
years, P2P traffic eclipsed HTTP traffic as broadband users slurped 
down music and movies, some of which were actually legal. But P2P 
fell behind this year; for the first time in four years, HTTP traffic 
is out in front.

Ellacoya Networks, makers of deep packet inspection gear for 
carriers, has pulled together some statistics on one million 
broadband users in North America, and its findings show that HTTP 
traffic accounts for 46 percent of all broadband traffic. P2P 
applications now account for only 37 percent.

[If the work was done from the perspective of 'carriers' - which I 
would see as an overlapping set with 'IAPs' - then the analysis is of 
backbone traffic;  and I imagine there's still a lot of traffic on US 
backbones that is for non-US users.  Why then does the discussion 
switch in mid-sentence from 'carriers' to 'one million broadband 
users'?]

Chalk it up to YouTube and other Internet video sharing sites. The 
surge in HTTP traffic is largely a surge in the use of streaming 
media, mostly video.

Breaking down the HTTP traffic, Ellacoya says that only 45 percent is 
used to pull down traditional web pages with text and images. The 
rest is mostly made up of streaming video (36 percent) and streaming 
audio (five percent). YouTube alone has grown so big that it now 
accounts for 20 percent of all HTTP traffic, or more than half of all 
HTTP streaming video.

Looking over all the numbers, one of the most surprising result is 
the continued success of NNTP (newsgroups) traffic, which still 
accounts for nine percent of the total. Clearly, newsgroup 
discussions (and, ahem, binaries) are still big business.

The data may provide some ammunition for companies that favor traffic 
shaping on their networks. Between P2P, newsgroups, and streaming 
HTTP video traffic, the vast majority of Internet traffic is 
non-critical (i.e., no one's going to die or lose $20 million if they 
don't download a YouTube clip or a new song in under a minute).

[I think we need to explain to the author something about Australian 
broadband politics.  That's *all* it's about here, isn't it??  Stop 
it Roger, or you'll get the temperature and the noise-level up again!]

Networks that want to ensure priority transmission of VoIP calls, 
traditional HTTP web browsing, medical imaging, etc., have a strong 
incentive to throttle back that flood of non-critical traffic when 
the network is experiencing heavy loads. That could bring them into 
conflict with proponents of strict network neutrality, though, who 
don't want to see any sort of packet prioritization.

[Without having participated in that debate, my sense of it was that 
the wish for network neutrality and not favouring some streams over 
others was because of the (huge) risk of bias both being unfairly 
implemented, and opening the way for even nastier forms of 
favour/disfavour (read censorhip).]


-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW