Deep Packet Inspection Reveals P2P Dominates Broadband Internet Usage

Deep packet inspection (DPI) vendor Sandvine today released research that shows that many of its service provider customers are still finding both sides of their residential Internet connection to be dominated by peer-to-peer file sharing traffic.

Some service providers claim that the vast majority of Internet bandwidth is being used by a select few users. As a result, increased attention is being placed on DPI wares, which check packets and identify their application.

“Dramatic increases in broadband capacity have created an environment where subscribers have an increasingly wide range of choices to satisfy their demand for rich media content,” said Sandvine Co-founder Tom Donnelly. “While file sharing remains the largest single category of residential broadband traffic, its rate of growth has slowed relative to streaming media and web browsing.”

Sandvine based its results on a mix of tier 1 and midsize North American cable and DSL providers, but would not say how many, nor name any of the service providers. Its website claims the vendor has over 100 customers cross 40 countries.

The vendor helped found the dPacket.org group earlier this month.

While some prefer managing Internet traffic flows for carrier network management, many others prefer DPI technology because it paves the way for them to meter what they deem excessive Internet use and/or create pay tiers. Comcast Corp. has already been slammed for throttling P2P traffic. It uses Sandvine products. Many operators want to charge extra to help cover the anticipated costs of network capacity increases.

The Sandvine customer research shows that web browsing and streaming have combined to overtake file sharing in terms of traffic on downstream Internet connections.

However, as a stand-alone category, P2P file sharing is still the leader at 35.5% of traffic, followed by web browsing at 32% and streaming at 18%, according to the customer research. P2P file sharing accounts for 44% of all Internet traffic, up about 4% over last year, according to the company.

In the upstream direction, P2P file sharing still dominates, consuming more than twice the amount of traffic as all other types combined, according to Sandvine. It accounts for 75%, followed by tunneling at 10% and web browsing at 9.5%.

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