Internet Traffic Jam

November 28, 2007 from the Globe And Mail – “Anyone who has ever found themselves trapped alongside other frustrated commuters during rush hour knows just how frustrating heavy traffic can be. But with more cars than ever crowding the highways, congestion and lane closures have become an unavoidable reality.

On the Internet, the resource isn't asphalt, it's bandwidth. But similar congestion problems have prompted some Internet service providers in Canada and the U.S. to restrict the flow of certain traffic on their networks.

They argue that bandwidth-intensive applications such as peer-to-peer file transfer programs clog their networks by using a large percentage of their traffic space, which leads to a poor experience for the rest of the customers, the same way a lumbering tractor trailer can impede flow on the highway. Their solution has been to "shape" traffic, essentially slowing down certain kinds of Internet activity while giving other data priority. Most of the traffic being shaped is peer-to-peer traffic.

Depending on the study, peer-to-peer traffic accounts for anywhere from 50 to 90 per cent of online traffic, but emanates from as few as 10 per cent of all users. Much of that traffic is facilitated through BitTorrent, a file-sharing protocol once synonymous with piracy but which recently has developed into a legitimate tool for quickly delivering large amounts of digital content…”

180 View – Most business people we know don’t know anything about BitTorrent and thought they (or you) should know a little about what’s consuming 50-90% of online traffic. We have heard rumours about the internet getting bogged down but we have not seen any evidence or any compelling reports to support this theory.