32 percent of peak Internet bandwidth being used by Netflix traffic

We all knew that Netflix is responsible for a lot of Internet traffic but as a result of a new study out today titled 2011 Sandvine Internet Phenomena Report we find out that Netflix is one of the largest consumers of Internet bandwidth clocking in a 32 percent of peak downstream traffic.

As well Netflix is responsible for just about 28 percent of all national bandwidth usage and it is this type of usage that along with three other Internet services: HTTP, BitTorrent, and YouTube, accounts for 64.4 percent of all network traffic in North America.

The report also showed that there is a rapid shift happening away from desktop PCs and moving towards things like set-top boxes, consoles like the Xbox, smartphones and tablets. According to the report only 45 percent of Internet traffic now goes to laptops or desktop computers.

Dave Caputo, CEO of Sandvine says that this shift should be a wake-up call that “counting bytes is no longer sufficient for network planning”, and that more attention needs to be taken to the quality of the video that they are delivering in order for consumers to have a higher quality of experience.

via VentureBeat