Netflix Is Responsible for 15% of Global Internet Traffic | Hacker News Reader

Netflix Is Responsible for 15% of Global Internet Traffic

statista.com

59 pointsandsoitis41 comments

I wonder if they'd have the necessary data to report traffic in byte-meters instead of bytes? CDNs push a lot of traffic, but not very far.

I feel like such an asinine statistic should use Imperial units!

Fine, bit-cubits it is.

punch cards per bald eagle

How long is an inverse bald eagle?

We're not allowed to find out, ethical issues.

Football field GBs.

That sounds like bandwidth-delay product [0] with extra steps.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth-delay_product

Is that even Internet traffic if in-net caches are counted?

Yes?

I mean, I tend to think it probably should count, but there's a valid argument to be made that it's not really inter-net traffic if it's inside a single (ISP's) network.

I don’t think that definition of traffic would make sense when talking about inter-state highways, for instance, although I wish it would. My commute would be a lot easier!

the interstate highways of the internet are the exchanges and connections between those. local traffic within an ISP should not hit those exchanges.

just like most local traffic should not need to use an interstate highway. one might even be able to say that if you need to use an interstate, your commute is not really local anymore. actually, i think one could even argue that if a significant amount of local traffic goes over an interstate then the street system is designed wrong (although i admit, i fear that this is quite common). it's like letting a local commuter train use a high-speed rail track. it happens, but it shouldn't.

Perhaps the reasons for Youtube being second in this list are following:-

1) Predominantly watched from mobile phones at lower quality settings.

2) Generally,people don't binge watch for 2-3 hours or more in one go on Youtube.

Also, youtube tends to downgrade the quality from 1080p to lower grades quite aggresively, even when watching on a PC with a fiber connection. Possibly a cost-saving measure?

I've noticed this a lot more lately. I've started going in and toggling video quality up (instead of toggling it down to reduce buffering)

Try this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/auto-hd4k8k-for-yo...

if i want to watch a longer video at guaranteed quality without buffering, i'll download it first. even if the download is slow, it makes better use of my time because i won't waste time waiting for buffers to fill.

> Generally,people don't binge watch for 2-3 hours or more in one go on Youtube.

Hold my beer

Yeah my kids will watch 6+ hours of YouTube or at least just leave it running even if not actively watching.

1. Want to read a book, that's effort 2. Maybe watch a show instead. Nah that's a half hour commitment I feel I don't have time for 3. Oh I know! Let's scroll shit on YouTube! 4. Significant amounts of time have passed

almost the same for me, except that if i read a book, i risk spending hours without paying attention to anything else, so no. 2 is also the reason why i don't watch half hour videos on youtube. but 3 and 4 happen anyways occasionally.

the problem is that with a book it's difficult to put down, especially mid-chapter. and with youtube videos i can stop after each video. (<- yeah right!)

solved it with audiobooks and making a list of shows i commit to watching when i have time, but no more than one episode per day.

Disney at 4.5%. Unless they use significantly higher stream quality, that is a very impressive market share for a new entrant.

Does that include their stake in Hulu and others though?

Not sure if traffic correlates to market share.

Prime video for instance has a lot of default subscribers (because a lot of us have Prime) but I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything HD. Most stuff is SD.

Whereas on YouTube my default quality is 4K.

Only new if you think the distribution system, rather than the actual content, is the sticky part.

I wonder how much Internet traffic is ads.

that's a good one

I wonder how much pornhub and related are,

I call bs on this chart. What about all the Chinese streaming apps?

Without more transparency (from the Chinese market) I'm not sure it would be tractable to report anything accurate.

"chinese internet" is mostly a separate network from the internet as we know it

Downstream Internet traffic. So if a provider puts Netflix’ CDN box, which they provide for free, on their network, the ‘global traffic’ is next to nothing. It’s just traffic to the customers, which the customers pay for, and no transit that the provider (or Netflix) has to pay for.

and youtube?

A little less

That's addressed in the article.

Isn't it more like "users of Netflix are responsible for 15% of Internet traffic"? What would Netflix traffic be without its users?

Or are we talking just about their CDN synchronization, and not about the user traffic?

A TCP connection has exactly two endpoints. Netflix hypothetically could always decide not to sell their product

> A TCP connection has exactly two endpoints.

Stop, you're hurting the NSA's feelings. :P

Packet-switched. :P

If the client/user doesn't ask to connect, there is no connection.

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