James Delahunty
14 Apr 2005 7:05
Last year, Internet users used up more bandwidth than ever, mainly due to the growing popularity of P2P networks and growing demand for video files. The demand prompted Internet carriers to upgrade their network capacity to handle the extra traffic. According to TeleGeography, a telecommunications research firm, the demand for bandwidth grew by 42% in 2004 with the largest growth being in Asia. This is the second consecutive bandwidth rise after carriers added 62% extra capacity in 2003.
"It really seems to be picking up again," said Alan Mauldin, senior research analyst at TeleGeography. Researchers are pointing the finger at P2P software as being the fastest growing consumer of bandwidth, growing so large that it can now rival traffic used in web surfing. Also on P2P networks, more people are now looking for Video files. "From mid-2004, we saw a significant shift away from music and on to video," said Andrew Parker, chief technical officer at England-Based P2P monitoring firm CacheLogic. "Before that it was mainly music."
According to Parker, the actions taken by the Recording and Movie Industry against P2P sharing has failed to reduce the number of people using P2P or the amount of traffic it consumes. In the United States, the RIAA and MPAA both claim that their actions have had an effect on P2P sharing but in reality there has been virtually no change in P2P traffic levels. "In some parts of the world we have seen the opposite happen. The publicity created by the MPAA actually drove users to find out what all the fuss was about and resulted in an increase in traffic levels," Parker said.
Cachelogic estimates that between 60% and 80% of capacity on consumer ISP networks is consumed by P2P. The average file size of traded files has grown to, to about 100MB. "ISP business models were based on the idea that not everyone would be using their internet capacity all the time," he said. "If customers are using their broadband connections to download movies and television programs all day, that could put a strain on networks." VoIP is also growing at a huge rate; however it requires much less bandwidth, in most cases, only about 30kb/s.
Source:
Wired