Netflix is way ahead of rivals when it comes to dominating the online streaming space, and the massive amount of bandwidth it consumes is good enough evidence for this. According to Sandvine, Netflix-related bandwidth accounts for a massive 37.05% share of all Internet traffic in North America when measured during peak hours.
Netflix way ahead of rivals
During peak hours, the bandwidth consumed by Netflix users exceeds the bandwidth consumed by YouTube, Amazon, Prime, Hulu and iTunes users in totality. YouTube stands in second place with a 17.85% share of Internet traffic. It has been found that a good 70% of downstream bandwidth is associated with streaming video and audio services.
Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo, talking about the new era of streaming services, said, “Streaming Video has grown at such a rapid pace in North America that the leading service in 2015, Netflix, now has a greater share of traffic than all of streaming audio and video did five years ago.”
Even though the bandwidth from sites like Netflix, YouTube and Facebook has increased, what could concern Netflix is the fact that the largest gainers were Amazon Video with a 3.11% share and Hulu with a 2.57% share. Six months ago, the two services consumed bandwidth shares of 2% and 1.9%.
BitTorrent’s popularity fading
One of the more interesting takeaways from Sandvine’s report was that BitTorrent is fading into irrelevancy, and that at a fast pace. BitTorrent accounts for 5% of total Internet traffic in North America. In 2011, file-sharing sites accounted for 22% of Internet traffic, and if we go further back in time to 2008, file-sharing sites accounted for 33% of Internet traffic. In recent years, a shift in the trends has been noticed in consumer viewing habits; now people prefer to stream rather than share files.
On Tuesday, Netflix shares closed up 1.29% at $126.98. Year to date, the stock is up over 160% while in the last one-month, it is up over 11%.
