P2P traffic to grow 400% by 2012
October 21, 2008
P2P Internet traffic, despite having grown at pace for years, will grow almost 400 per cent over the next five years, according to MultiMedia Intelligence. Growing from a level of 1.6 petabytes of Internet traffic per month in 2007, P2P Internet traffic will grow to almost 8 petabytes per month by 2012.
P2P data currently represents 44 per cent of all consumer traffic over the Internet and 33.6 per cent in North America. Although the base of legitimate P2P traffic is starting quite small, legitimate P2P traffic is expected to grow 10 times as fast as illicit P2P traffic. Content owners increasingly see P2P as a cost effective way to distribute digital entertainment services and content.