Yes folks once again new figures show that P2P usage has outstripped any web usage by most consumers
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/p2p_growth_trend_watch.phpWhile looking through Mary Meeker's 2006 Web 2.0 Summit presentation, I was struck by the figures on page 19: "Peer-to-Peer (P2P) traffic was 60% (and rising) of Internet traffic in 2004/2005, with BitTorrent accounting for 30% of traffic, per CacheLogic". You can definitely see why this is the case, as P2P is normally used to download very large media files - music, movies, etc. But still it makes you realise just how big P2P currently is on the Internet and, given the increasing amount of video coming onto the Web, how crucial it is going forward.
I followed up by checking out the CacheLogic webpage, which has an interesting research presentation on its homepage entitled True Picture of P2P Filesharing.
While it is difficult to measure P2P traffic, CacheLogic identified BitTorrent and eDonkey as being larger than FrastTrack (KaZaA).
The larger trends at play here (as outlined by CacheLogic) are:
P2P is not in decline, in fact it is growing at a sharp rate (see Meeker's slide above).
The "vast majority" of P2P traffic is of files > 100MB. While most of this is video, there are other things such as CD images for open source software (see graphic below).
CacheLogic says that a "significant proportion of the user population" is using P2P, not just a few heavy users.
Its nice to see the trend is a growth of users deciding not to buy pre-packaged media from the traditional monopoly sources, make way for the new dawn RIAA/MPAA, your days are numbered (I hope
).
