Netflix dominates the internet, but keep an eye on gaming geeks – Sandvine

Netflix currently accounts for an incredible proportion of global internet traffic, though the gaming segment is starting to throw its weight around.

According to research unveiled by Sandvine, The Global Internet Phenomena Report, Netflix now accounts for 15% of the total downstream volume of traffic across the entire internet. This is an astronomical number when you consider the service only has 130 million subscribers, a large number but some would perhaps has thought higher, while there are roughly 1.7 billion websites on the internet. Video on the whole accounted for 58% of the traffic meandering along the digital pavements.

Netflix, and video on the whole, dominating trends is not a new idea. This is something the telcos have been preparing for, though the gaming segment has been rarely discussed. Gaming has traditionally been reserved for very niche demographics, though with more content providers targeting mobile applications, the target audience has been increasing substantially, as has the depth and scale of the games themselves.

Looking at the contributions to the bottleneck, in Europe two of the top ten owners of downstream traffic volume are relating to gaming; PlayStation and Steam (focused on PC-based gaming). PC games can be as much as 100 GB in size, owning to consumer demands to make more larger and more immersive environments, though telcos would be wary of the continuing momentum for mobile games. With data becoming cheaper for the consumer and devices becoming more powerful, content developers are being encouraged to introduce mobile games which are more on par with those on other platforms. The sheer breadth, depth and variety of these titles on the app stores is quite staggering.

This of course will stress networks, especially considering many users of these games will use them when out and about, not connected to home broadband or public wifi. Ensuring these mobile games meet the demands of the consumer will be critical, as it may well soon become another stick to hit connectivity providers with.

Another interesting statistic to emerge from the data is the level of encryption. Sandvine estimates 50% of internet traffic is now encrypted, though this might be a conservative guess. The estimate only accounts for sources which are encrypted consistently, the number might well be higher, and it is certainly increasing. For consumers, this is a promising trend set against a backdrop of data privacy scandals and breaches, though it is an added complication for the telcos.

Encryption of course protects the consumer from wandering eyes with nefarious intentions, but it also prevents the telcos from keeping an eye on what is going on. Without visibility into what type of traffic is traversing the algorithmic piste, the telcos cannot tailor the delivery and enhance the experience for the consumer. The blame of poor experience might be thrown towards the telcos, but with encryption trends heading northwards, they are relatively helpless.