FACT - Freedom Against Censorship Thailand

[FACT comments: These are some big numbers. Is it in the interest of a public who uses P2P so extensively to try to slow it down?]

Internet Mysteries: How Much File Sharing Traffic Travels the Net?
By Ryan Singel
Wired: May 5, 2008

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/how-much-file-s.html

How much of the traffic on the internet is peer-to-peer file trading?…Ellacoya’s report said that http-based web traffic had overtaken peer-to-peer traffic on the net, thanks to streaming media sites like YouTube.
Ellacoya, since acquired by Arbor Networks for its traffic-shaping technology, pegged http traffic at 46 percent of the net’s volume, with P2P traffic close by at 37 percent.The company says the data was based on about 1 million North American broadband subscribers…Cache Logic study just came out with a number — no trends, just that file sharing was  30 to 50 percent of traffic…The information is vital.  Comcast claims that torrents of purloined pop music and movies are filling the internet’s tubes — requiring them to block, divert and dam peer-to-peer traffic…Ipoque, a P2P traffic management firm, released its own study (.pdf) of internet traffic in 2007, focusing on Germany, Australia, Eastern Europe and Southern Europe…P2P traffic accounted for between 49% and 83 % of internet traffic in these regions…For instance in the Middle East, the most popular BitTorrent Audio download was Beyonce’s Listen, according to Ipoque. (Does that mean American foreign policy is winning or losing?)…The study is unlikely to please internet scientists, since the data set is not public nor is there much discussion of how the numbers were arrived at.