According to the report of the company Sandvine, 15% of global Internet traffic is occupied by Netflix, with peaks of 40% in the United States during dinner hours
Global Internet traffic consists of 15% of content from Netflix. The famous service of streaming and on-demand movies and TV series is the "first culprit" of Internet bandwidth consumption. That's what emerged from research conducted by broadband service management company Sandvine.
Netflix's success is relatively surprising. Services for playing videos, both live and not, are basically the main part of users' search in recent years. In 2017, 58% of traffic on the Web was focused on video. And if Netflix has 15% of the total YouTube exceeds 13%. Streaming and on-demand videos are therefore the present and the near future of the Internet and it is no coincidence that many social media, see on all Instagram with IGTV, are trying to channel their efforts on the creation of original content uploaded by the users themselves and usable for everyone. After videos, among the elements that characterize the global Internet traffic we find website browsing (17%), video games (7.8%) and finally social networks (5.1%).
Netflix's dominance in global Internet traffic
According to the Sandvine report, in the coming years videos are destined to attract more than 70% of all people's online browsing. Suffice it to say that after dinner hours, which is the peak time for streaming and on-demand movies, in the U.S. alone Netflix accounts for more than 40% of all Internet traffic in the country. In practice, nearly one in two Americans if they connect to the Internet after dinner it is to watch a movie or TV series on Netflix. According to Sandvine, with the improvement of playback quality and with 4K movies, these figures are destined to increase further, in practice there will be times of the day when people will connect to the Net almost exclusively to use Netflix or a similar service for movies and TV series.
Piracy, the other side of the coin
Not all users, however, are willing to pay a monthly or annual subscription to have movies and TV series available at any time and on any device. And it's no coincidence that piracy is on the rise, especially in Europe and the Middle East. File sharing sites, both legal and illegal, have reached 21% of total traffic this year, with peaks of 31% in the European Union. Videos are increasingly sought after but not everyone is willing to pay for them. It should also be mentioned that among illegal file sharing are a lot of video games, which "consume" much more Internet traffic. For example, a downloaded copy of Call of Duty Black Ops uses up to 101 GB of data, the equivalent of 14 hours of 4K video.