Within the last month, a couple of reports have been released that contain some helpful information about Internet bandwidth. Palo Alto Networks’ ninth Application Usage and Risk Report analyzed over 2,000 network traffic assessments to determine which applications in business networks were using the most bandwidth. And the FCC just published their Report on Consumer Wireline Broadband Performance in the U.S. tracking the performance of various commercial Internet service providers. Neither report contains any news that is likely to totally stun you, but they may confirm some things that you already suspected about your bandwidth.
- P2P traffic and streaming media are killing enterprise bandwidth, report (SecurityWeek/Steve Ragan) “Between November 2011 and May 2012, P2P traffic on the networks used for the study jumped 700% — representing 14% of the overall traffic during the reporting period. Moreover, streaming media applications such as Netflix and YouTube, accounted for a 300% jump when compared to the last Palo Alto study.”
- P2P and streaming video gobble up increasing corporate bandwidth (ReadWriteWeb/David Strom) “At least one browser-based file-sharing application was detected on 89% of the participating organizations’ networks, and an average of 13 different file-sharing apps were found on each customer’s network. What is even more sobering is that the takedown of popular file-sharing site MegaUpload in January 2012 didn’t really put a dent in this kind of traffic.”
- Shocker: FCC finds ISPs closer to giving consumers what they pay for (Digital Trends/Geoff Duncan) “This year, the FCC finds that major ISPs are getting even closer to providing customers with the services they’re advertising — and some providers and technologies regularly exceed advertised performance in some tiers. However, the FCC finds there’s still considerable variation in broadband service…”
- How fast is your ISP? A new report tells all (GigaOM/Stacey Higginbotham) “The report also takes a look at data consumption and when people consume it. Generally during the 8-10PM block is when the FCC saw providers fall below their advertised speeds, presumably as their networks became more congested. Some ISPs have more even speeds than others, indicating that they may have less reliable ways of handling congestion.”
Fact tool fact:
Palo Alto Networks has posted a nifty visual tool that examines their raw data at http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/app-usage-risk-report-visualization.
