Netflix Streaming Traffic Grew 30% In Last Six Months: Study

The volume of Netflix's streaming-video traffic over wireline broadband networks in North America climbed 30% over the past six months, although the company's share of overall usage has leveled off at approximately 33% of all peak-hour downstream bandwidth, according to a new study.

That means that in North America, Netflix -- which continues to be the largest single source of traffic on fixed-access networks -- drives about one-third of capacity infrastructure costs for cable and telco providers, according to the report from bandwidth-management equipment vendor Sandvine. Factoring in aggregate upstream and downstream traffic, Netflix represents 24.4% of total volume, ahead of BitTorrent at 14.2%. On downstream usage during primetime hours, Netflix accounts for 32.9% of traffic, which is up only slightly from 32.7% in September 2011, Sandvine said.