Deposed king: First created by programmer Brian Cohen in 2001, BitTorrent provided a highly effective peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol for transmitting files and other digital content over the Internet. These days, the technology isn’t the data sharing powerhouse it was just a few years ago.
While Internet traffic continues to grow at an accelerated rate, BitTorrent appears to no longer contribute to a significant portion of upstream data sources. Canadian network intelligence company Sandvine recently released its latest report on “Internet Phenomena,” highlighting major changes in the network traffic market.
Twenty years ago, before the Web 2.0 revolution, BitTorrent likely generated about 35 percent of all Internet traffic. At the time, file sharing and peer-to-peer applications were the main drivers of data traffic, as there were no other potential sources capable of generating similar amounts of traffic.
Today, the Internet is a completely different place. Video streaming and social services such as YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok now dominate the world’s internet traffic, and most of the piracy-related activity has also shifted from his P2P networks to streaming websites. Although BitTorrent was replaced as the main source of Internet downloads, it still contributed a significant share of upstream traffic.
Even in 2013, BitTorrent accounted for one-third of all upload traffic on the Internet. Two years ago, it was 10% of upstream traffic. Currently, according to the latest information data from Sandvine, the BitTorrent protocol has completely lost its appeal among Internet users. The Canadian company says the top 10 upstream data sources are now mostly related to cloud storage, messaging and video streaming, with video and social media driving upstream traffic across both fixed and mobile broadband connections. It is said that it monopolizes more than half of the total.
BitTorrent still plays a role within fixed access networks, with the file sharing protocol currently accounting for 4% of all upstream bandwidth. However, services like iCloud and YouTube generate much more traffic compared to Bram Cohen’s network.
Sandvine said BitTorrent is still considered a “significant factor” in traffic generation because the number of people using the network is relatively small. Although piracy is probably the main culprit, researchers and academic institutions also use this protocol to share vast amounts of data.
Sandvine expects BitTorrent traffic to continue to decline as users increasingly turn to the cloud and streaming services as their primary source of content.
