Internet Mysteries: How Much File Sharing Traffic Travels the Net?

[zatoicchi]

How much of the traffic on the internet is peer-to-peer file trading?

Everyone seems to agree it represents a lot of the traffic, but the truth is no one knows (with the possible exception of the ISPs and backbone providers in the middle, and they aren't telling or sharing raw data).

One of the most recent reports on P2P traffic came from a traffic optimization firm called Ellacoya in June 2007. Their report said that http-based web traffic had overtaken peer-to-peer traffic on the net, thanks to streaming media sites like YouTube.

Ellacoya, since acquired by Arbor Networks for its traffic-shaping technology, pegged http traffic at 46 percent of the net's volume, with P2P traffic close by at 37 percent.The company says the data was based on about 1 million North American broadband subscribers.

Internet Mysteries: How Much File Sharing Traffic Travels the Net?

[Aurion]

"..pegged http traffic at 46 percent of the net's volume, with P2P traffic close by at 37 percent"

well,this is a huge scale volumes,since 37% for p2p is way better than nothing because all p2p traffic is being shapped out by most of ISPs lately,anyway,as the news stated,most of the ISP/service optimizers wont truely give raw info at all on how bandwith traffic would be transfered daily on the big web

[anon]

"How Much File Sharing Traffic Travels the Net?"

a lot, and every time more.

[zatoicchi]

wondering how do they even calculate how much is shared trough the net..that is just impossible..

[Aurion]

wondering how do they even calculate how much is shared trough the net..that is just impossible..

Spywares can do that very easily,nice & clean I guess that was a good reason for the CIA or whatever secret agency to create such a tiny program years ago to spy on certain PC users so I guess a similar tool could be used to calculate how much bandwith moves daily on the web on an average basis at least

[anon]

for the CIA or whatever secret agency to create such a tiny program years ago to spy on certain PC users

do you mean the FBI's "Magic Lantern" trojan? they even agreed with some antivirus companies so that the program wouldn't be detected...