Netflix Surpasses BitTorrent in North American Traffic

Netflix now represents 25% of aggregate North American internet traffic. That’s more than BitTorrent, HTTP or YouTube traffic. {TechCrunch}

While content providers debate how to handle rights to streaming content, the traffic numbers seem to indicate that torrent downloads are the only close alternative (BitTorrent represented approximately 17% of North American traffic). Considering the laws studios are trying to push through to wipe torrent sites off of the web, we’re guessing they’ll choose to play ball with Netflix.

It’s worth noting that due to the sheer size of high definition video files (the kind streamed by Netflix), it’s not hard to eat up lots of bandwidth. So Netflix isn’t really bigger than the entire non-video web just yet, but content consumption is definitely headed in an on-demand direction, meaning the much anticipated shift from TV to the web may finally be gaining steam.

The internet video revolution probably won’t be televised, but it will will probably be available on demand.