European Internet Traffic: LSE Analysis

European Internet Traffic: Indicator of Growth and Competition in Digital Services – A summary | LSE Network Economy Forum: "UK big four (other than YouTube) are BBC iPlayer (5.1%), Netflix (2.51%), Lovefilm (1.46%), and 4oD (1.1%), but due to their regional character and restrictions, they fail to be among Europe’s top ten services overall. In the US, Netflix is the main traffic driver with 29% of composite traffic and the analyst firm Sandvine estimate that Netflix alone accounts for one-third of capacity infrastructure costs in the US (Sandvine 2012). Arbor Networks estimated in February 2010 that 60% of Google’s traffic was channeled through direct interconnects that link its data centres to one another. Assuming this share has not decreased, and combined with estimations (Sandvine 2012) of Youtube making up about 20% of aggregate traffic, this would indicate that at least some 12% of peak time traffic in Europe consists of Google’s privately routed YouTube traffic. During interviews we have further confirmed our preliminary belief that privately peered traffic makes up at least 20% of total traffic volume in Europe."
They make the important point that IXCs are the minority of traffic: "internet exchanges only make up about 30% of Cisco’s estimated total traffic on the internet. This is explained by the fact that Cisco includes managed IP traffic and other traffic observed at the end-points of the network that do not necessarily pass through the internet exchanges...The whole community needs accessible data on internet traffic to enable evidence-based policy: while we can measure a great deal about traffic on the internet, there remains a great deal that is obscure, incommensurate or inaccessible."
Hear hear! There will be more at their excellent-looking Network Economy conference on 13 May, from which I will report.  'via Blog this'