20 June 2007

YouTube has been credited with changing the complexion of data on the
internet. The popularity of the video sharing site means that HTTP eats
up more bandwidth than any other data transfer protocol.

For more than four years,
peer-to-peer (p2p) applications swapping music and latterly movie files
have overwhelmingly consumed the largest percentage of bandwidth,
according to broadband technology firm Ellacoya Networks.

As a result of streaming audio and video, however, HTTP accounts for
approximately 46% of all traffic on the network while just 37% is p2p.
Newsgroups (9%), non-HTTP video streaming (3%), gaming (2%) and VoIP
(1%) are the next most widely used applications.