Chicago (IL) - P2P Internet traffic is expected to grow almost 400% over the next 5 years, according to a study conducted by MultiMedia Intelligence. Traffic is expected to increase from an average level of 1.6 PB (petabytes) month in 2007 to 8 PB per month by 2012.
MultiMedia Intelligence believes that legitimate P2P traffic will also increase over the next few years. Though the current amount of legal traffic being conveyed across P2P lines is small, it is expected to grow 10 times as fast as illegal P2P traffic.
“The awareness of P2P networking grew from the illicit ‘sharing’ of music files, much to the chagrin of content holders,” according to Frank Dickson, Chief Research Officer with MultiMedia Intelligence. “Despite the prevailing perceptions of P2P as synonymous with content piracy, P2P is emerging as viable means of distributing legitimate content.”
P2P data currently contributes to 44% of all consumer traffic moved across the Internet, and a total of 33.6% in North America alone. With content owners continually looking to P2P as a cost effective tool to distribute their content, that figure is only going to grow, the market researchers believe.
Of the P2P material distributed, over 70% consists of audio and video files, with the number of audio files transferred far outweighing the amount of video and other files.
MultiMedia Intelligence believes that legitimate P2P traffic will also increase over the next few years. Though the current amount of legal traffic being conveyed across P2P lines is small, it is expected to grow 10 times as fast as illegal P2P traffic.
“The awareness of P2P networking grew from the illicit ‘sharing’ of music files, much to the chagrin of content holders,” according to Frank Dickson, Chief Research Officer with MultiMedia Intelligence. “Despite the prevailing perceptions of P2P as synonymous with content piracy, P2P is emerging as viable means of distributing legitimate content.”
P2P data currently contributes to 44% of all consumer traffic moved across the Internet, and a total of 33.6% in North America alone. With content owners continually looking to P2P as a cost effective tool to distribute their content, that figure is only going to grow, the market researchers believe.
Of the P2P material distributed, over 70% consists of audio and video files, with the number of audio files transferred far outweighing the amount of video and other files.