Netflix Drives More Traffic Than "Surfing"

Some study done by a group that works with Comcast believes that Netflix traffic is greater than typicall web surfing traffic. I wouldn't typically post this as news, but I was drawn to a comment that was posted regarding the article. Someone mentioned that this will hopefully lead to more studios offering their movies to stream on Netflix, because it would be more profitable for them since people are downloading their movies using filesharing anyway. It's an excellent point. Not that I'm in favor of breaking the law, but at this point it doesn't seem to be a battle that studios can keep up with. If they offer the movies on Netflix, they'd at least make some money off of it rather than nothing at all from those that are sharing it. I also thought it was interesting that Netflix has more subscribers than Comcast, so it would make sense for studios to deal with them anyway. By the way, I have Comcast and they suck hard.....

Quote

A study published Tuesday by Sandvine Inc. shows that Netflix movies and TV shows account for nearly 30 percent of traffic into homes during peak evening hours, compared with less than 17 percent for Web browsing.

Only about a quarter of homes with broadband subscribe to Netflix, but watching movies and TV shows online takes up a lot of bandwidth compared with Web surfing, email and practically every other Internet activity except file sharing and videoconferencing.

As late as last year, both Web surfing and peer-to-peer file sharing — mainly the illegal trading of copyrighted movies — were each larger than Netflix's traffic.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43059955/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/