Netflix is responsible for a big chunk of the world's Internet traffic. According to Sandvine’s 2018 Global Internet Phenomena Report, the streaming video giant uses about 15 percent of the available bandwidth -- the most of any single application. In the United States, Netflix’s bandwidth appetite increases to 19.1% of all traffic, and in the evening, usage spikes as high as 40 percent, in response to the demand for popular Netflix programming.
Bandwith dominance:
- The data Sandvine uses to compile its annual list comes from more than 150 global service-provider customers, representing 2.1 billion subscribers, but the report doesn’t include data from China or India.
- Netflix’s video encoding is more efficient than that of many other providers. If its compression algorithms were less effective, Netflix would be dominating the available bandwidth even more.
- Video makes up more than half of the downstream traffic online, at 57.7% of the total volume, followed by web usage at 17 percent, gaming at 7.8 percent, and social media applications at 5.1 percent.