Sandvine: “Netflix is now the unquestioned king of North American’s fixed access networks”

Sandvine: “Netflix is now the unquestioned king of North American’s fixed access networks”According to the latest Global Internet Phenomena report from Sandvine, popular streaming service Netflix is ruling the roost when it comes to data use in the US, thanks largely to the consumers’ growing appetite for on-demand applications and video.

As per the Sandvine statistics, Netfilix – the leading movie streaming and red-envelope mailing service, which has around 28 percent subscriber penetration in the US – presently accounts for almost 30 percent of all peak time wired network download traffic in North America.

Noting that the increase represents a 44 percent surge in Netflix's share of data deployment last year, the Sandvine report said: “Netflix is now the unquestioned king of North America’s fixed access networks.”

Furthermore, Sandvine's measurements pertaining to total traffic averaged over the full day clearly reveal that the online video provider has even surpassed BitTorrent as the top data dog on North American wired systems --- with Netflix’s share being 22.2 percent, vis-à-vis BitTorrent's 21.6 percent share.

The report from Sandvine – a network equipment-manufacturing firm that also conducts market research on the broadband sector – has also revealed that a chunk of the Netflix traffic comes from gaming devices, with the Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox accounting for nearly two-thirds of all downstream data combined; while PCs account for just around 20 percent of Netflix traffic.