Netflix uses 15% of the world’s available bandwidth, increasing to 19.1% in the US, and peaking at 40% in the evening due to demand for its popular shows. Sandvine’s report is based on data from over 150 global service providers, but doesn’t include China or India. Netflix’s efficient video encoding is a factor in its dominance. Video accounts for over half of downstream online traffic, followed by web usage, gaming, and social media.
Netflix is responsible for a large chunk of the world’s internet traffic. According to Sandvine’s 2018 Global Internet Phenomena Report, the video streaming giant uses about 15% of available bandwidth, the most of any single application. In the US, Netflix’s bandwidth appetite increases to 19.1% of all traffic, and usage peaks as high as 40% in the evening, in response to demand for Netflix’s popular shows.
Band dominance:
The data Sandvine uses to compile its annual list comes from more than 150 global service provider customers, representing 2.1 billion subscribers, but the report doesn’t include data from China or India.
Netflix’s video encoding is more efficient than many other providers. If its compression algorithms were less effective, Netflix would dominate the available bandwidth even more.
Video accounts for more than half of downstream online traffic, accounting for 57.7% of total volume, followed by web usage at 17%, gaming at 7.8% and social media applications at 5.1%.
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