Torrent download traffic and piracy is triggered through VPN
Internet usage patterns are constantly changing over the years. Currently, video streaming dominates the network, which the P2P did just a decade ago. The “fault” of it is Netflix and YouTube for the most part, but it seems that there are many trends that are beginning to change.
The torrent and the VPN fire their traffic in the first half of 2019
This has been revealed by a new report prepared by Sandvine. In the last year, streaming has accounted for 60.6% of downlink traffic and 22.2% of upload . Netflix represents 12.2% of the entire drop worldwide. In the case of P2P networks , the drop figure is only 4.2% down, but it reaches a spectacular figure of 30.2% in the rise worldwide.
This makes sense if we consider what the philosophy of the P2P is, where someone downloads a file and usually shares it for other people to download. In addition, in general terms, much more information is lowered than it is uploaded, so in total terms it is possible that the figure even equals, although in the report there is only percentage data.
However, the spectacular thing about the number of torrent downloads is that it has increased by almost 50% in the first quarter of 2019 for downhill traffic, while the rise has increased by 35%. As in previous reports, the increase in traffic varies by region. In the case of P2P, it has increased in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), as well as in Asia.
It is in EMEA where the traffic through BitTorrent is most popular, representing 5.3% of all the downward traffic, and 44.2% of the upstream traffic, being therefore the region of the world where more traffic is generated although in countries like Germany or France there are fines if pirated content is shared.
Fragmentation in streaming and Game of Thrones, the main “guilty” of the increase
According to Sandvine, the “culprit” of this increase is the fragmentation that streaming platforms are suffering , in addition to the price of subscriptions is rising. The movies and series remain the most pirated content, where a peak of rise was also identified between the beginning of April and the end of May this year, coinciding with the premiere of the last season of Game of Thrones, in addition to the Avengers screeners: Endgame. We will see how it has affected piracy throughout this year, but the increase will be very large considering that last year the series did not broadcast any season.
In addition to the P2P, Sandvine highlights that traffic through VPN has skyrocketed in the first quarter. Around 2% of global traffic is done through a VPN, while the upload has increased up to 5%, which allows us to intuit that it is used primarily for P2P networks.
All this traffic has to do only with P2P networks, but that does not mean that this is the only way to hack. In the list of Sandvine is also compiled “HTTP Media Stream” with 3.9%, which includes all pirated traffic through streaming. Openload, one of the most used websites to watch pirated video, is responsible for 2.4% of all Internet streaming traffic. We will have to see if the growing trend is maintained in the coming years when the fragmentation is greater.
