Report: Netflix accounts for almost 30 percent of online traffic

Consumer Reports News: May 17, 2011 04:33 PM

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Broadband-network vendor Sandvine reports that as of March of this year, Netflix's streaming video accounts for the largest source of downstream Internet traffic in North America, at 29.7 percent. TechCrunch pointed out that this number has increased from 21 percent just last fall.

Not surprisingly, the broad category of Real-Time Entertainment—streaming video and music—took the lion's share of nearly 50 percent of traffic. "If this rate of growth is sustained, Real-Time Entertainment will make up 55-60% of traffic by the end of the year," according to Sandvine.

Netflix beat out other traffic sources including HTTP websites, BitTorrent (a peer-to-peer file-sharing network), and YouTube.

Netflix Now The Largest Single Source of Internet Traffic In North America, TechCrunch

—Carol Mangis