

Netflix Streaming = 20% of peak Internet traffic in the US - milkshakes
http://www.sandvine.com/news/pr_detail.asp?ID=288

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andrewjshults
From Netflix's own site they currently have around 15 million subscribers and
from the world bank, there are about 230 million people with internet in the
US so about 6% of the internet users are taking up 20% of the peak bandwidth
(assuming that all 15 million actually use the streaming service which is
probably a gross over estimation). It'd be very interesting to see how the
YouTube/Hulu numbers compare. I can see why Netflix would be such a high
consumer (longer content and now a lot more HD content) but even still 20%
seems very high when you factor in things like YouTube, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon
and file sharing like Bit Torrent.

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Osiris
My sister-in-law and father-in-law both pay $10/mn to Netflix and never rent
movies. They use it for streaming only. I have a feeling that there are a lot
of these kinds of Netflix customers that pad the company's profits.

I'm not entirely surprised that most streaming is 8-10pm, but in my family,
it's all from 8am to 10am. The kids just have to watch the same Thomas and
Caillou over and over again.

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Qz
One of my roommates has an Xbox 360 solely for streaming Netflix on his big TV
in lieu of cable.

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gfunk911
Ok. This article seems to be saying that Netflix epsnds 500 mil/year on
shipping, and they now spend more on streaming than shipping. Let's say they
spend 500 mil/year on streaming.

[http://newteevee.com/2010/10/20/netflix-ceo-we-are-now-a-
str...](http://newteevee.com/2010/10/20/netflix-ceo-we-are-now-a-streaming-
company/)

Let's also assume that they spend 2 cents/gb on bandwith, so $1/50gb. 50gb *
500mil == 500 * 50pb == 25 exabytes.

Somebody with more knowledge: does the yearly US bandwidth sound like it's in
the range of 125 exabytes?

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jedberg
They run their entire streaming service from EC2, which at the best price is 8
cents /GB. Assuming they worked out a deal (which I've never heard of Amazon
doing), they might be as low as say 4 cents. So I'd say best case you need to
at least 1/2 your numbers.

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timdorr
Where does it say that? If they're pushing as much transit as they say they
are, they would be going straight to the Tier 1's and running their own
servers.

Also, when you're doing as much traffic as Netflix is, then you should be
measuring in line speed, not data transferred. Providers bill based on speed
(by the Mbit or Gbit) because that represents best how much of their total
capacity you're using. It doesn't cost them anything to transfer some amount
of data, but it does cost them in the total amount of bandwidth they have left
to sell to other customers.

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mfringel
_It doesn't cost them anything to transfer some amount of data, but it does
cost them in the total amount of bandwidth they have left to sell to other
customers._

At some level transfer quantity and rate are the same thing. A bit sent for
customer A takes up space on the wire that can not be used for customer B, no
matter how it's measured.

It's also unclear which line would be measured for purposes of Netflix's
transfer rate. That's one of the beauties of the cloud... specific line
transfer rates are abstracted away into an aggregate quantity of data.

If you're selling lines, you charge by rate. If you're selling transfer, you
sell by bits.

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akozak
This definitely throws a wrench in the argument that high bandwidth user =
illegal file sharing, baby punching terrorist.

I'd be surprised if Netflix didn't have some arrangement with the major ISPs.
On the other hand, if Netflix is doing just fine without having to worry about
negotiating with ISPs to avoid throttling, then maybe it _is_ still feasible
to fund and launch a new high-bandwidth product.

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kingkilr
Well, it depends what the other 80% is ;) Personally, I think this presents a
compelling argument that transferring video content takes a shit ton of
bandwidth.

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jemfinch
Did you really need such an argument?

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robertk
It's more accurate and less misleading to say "bandwidth" rather than
"traffic."

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quizbiz
I wonder where Youtube falls in regards to % of bandwidth in North America.

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flipp
9.5%

