Netflix, YouTube account for all Internet traffic

Streaming video from Netflix and YouTube makes up half of peak Internet traffic in North America, a study reveals. Canadian network equipment provider Sandvine, in its biannual traffic report, said Netflix and YouTube combined account for 50.31 percent of the downstream traffic during the peak part of the day. Netflix, the leading streaming application in North America, accounted for nearly 32 percent of all downstream network traffic, Sandvine said, while nearly 19 percent of that traffic involved YouTube. Rivals such as Amazon Instant Video and Hulu are far behind, with both at less than 2 percent of peak traffic, the report found. While "on-demand" instant video streaming was up, "experience later" applications such as peer-to-peer file sharing were down considerably, Sandvine said. File sharing now accounts for less than 10 percent of total daily traffic in North America, a considerable drop from the 60 percent it represented in Sandvine's first Global Internet Phenomena Report released more than 10 years ago.