P2P Internet Traffic : The Elephant

Since several years ago, peer-to-peer issues have been a central topic on IP networking. This has been pictured in the program of some top networking conferences e.g. INFOCOM, SIGCOMM, ITC, GLOBECOM etc. What actually makes P2P issues so important?

One possible answer can be seen in the graph at the right. According to Telegeograhpy, as of 2007 54% of the total Internet traffic is originated from P2P applications which are in the forms of video (61%), audio (11%) and other formats (27%).



Some other facts (taken from Telegeography):

• P2P traffic accounts for nearly 60% of Internet traffic (Sandvine)
• The share of P2P traffic varies from 10% to 70% depending on a carrier's customer base and geograpic coverage (TG's interviews with carriers)
• When TPB torrent network was taken down in Sweden, TeliaSonera's Internet traffic declined by 60%!
• P2P accounted for 50% of upstream capacity on Japanese networks in 04/2006 (Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)

Applications that may or may not impact long-haul networks:

• YouTube serves 70 mn low-res videos daily!
• Online Gaming: World of Warcraft reported 6.5 mn subscribers in early 2006
• Video Calling: Microsoft claimed that users of Microsoft Messenger engaged in 1.1 bn minutes of video calling during 01/2006 (how about Yahoo?)
• Sporting events which routinely streamed online (World Cup, major league baseball etc.)
• Grid Computing : Teragrid (10 Gbps connections)
• In 06/2006 more than 106.5 mn people (3 of 5 US Internet users) streamed or downloaded video (in total, nearly 7.2 bn videos were streamed or downloaded - comScore 09/2006)