Comments on: More Record Breaking Streaming and the Latest iPlayer News

By: Trend to streaming media backed up by ISP data | The Equity Kicker

Trend to streaming media backed up by ISP data | The Equity Kicker — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:37:17 +0000

[...] I wrote about Amazon extending their video streaming service, and now today I read about traffic data at ISP Plusnet that backs up this trend (via the blogs of Azeem Azhar and Martin [...]

By: Britânicos partilham menos ficheiros e vêm mais vídeos via streaming | Remixtures

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:53:56 +0000

[...] semana, a Ars Technica divulgou algumas estatísticas publicadas pelo ISP britânico PlusNet em Julho que corroboram esses dados: o tráfego de Peer-to-Peer está de facto a diminuir a olhos [...]

By: ¿Cómo se puede luchar contra el todo gratis del P2P? | El blog de Prieto

¿Cómo se puede luchar contra el todo gratis del P2P? | El blog de Prieto — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:07:45 +0000

[...] datos del proveedor de Internet británico Plus.net: en el último año el tráfico P2P ha bajado un 8.75% en su red, mientras que el de streaming ha [...]

By: talpa

talpa — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:58:10 +0000

Thanks for the figures Dave - can you divide them by the number of customers online in the period?

(IE if the number of customers on Pro has fallen [Maybe due to the increased limits on the other products] then that could also be the reason for the drop?

Anyway - all interesting stuff!

By: Dave Tomlinson

Dave Tomlinson — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:01:07 +0000

"On a network that prioritises streaming over P2P, and on which you’ve acknowledged that there’s been an increase in streaming traffic - wouldn’t you expect that the volume of P2P traffic would decrease"

Even on products like BBYW Pro and PAYG where there's no difference in the priority of streaming and P2P (or rate limit) there's a decrease in P2P usage.

On BBYW Pro usage has dropped from a high of 7.81GB in December per customer of P2P to 6.39GB last month. On PAYG. While a year ago on PAYG P2P usage was 0.46GB per customer per month and is now 0.37GB per month.

It's certainly a shift in the type of usage that customers are doing, one of the reasons someone may select BBYW Pro over another product is because all traffic gets high priority on the network and doesn't get rate limit and yet they too are using more streaming and less P2P.

Another example is the overnight usage. We were seeing around 150-170TB per month of P2P and Usenet downloaded during the overnight (midnight to 8am) period a year ago, it's now around 140-150TB.

By: Dave Tomlinson

Dave Tomlinson — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:44:04 +0000

Yep, we have seen a little bit of a change. The increased usage allowances on BBYW 2, 3 and Pro have seen the average usage per customer on these products grow by approximately 15% over the last 2 months.

Digging into what that increase is made up from the biggest change seems to be P2P traffic in the chargeable hours (8am to midnight). The percentage of P2P downloaded and uploaded overnight on BBYW Option 2 for example decreased from around 74% to 64%.

I expect some increase in usage to come off the back of movie content on the PS3 and Xbox 360 but I think certainly to start with the impact will be small. Something like the iPlayer has shown that people prefer streaming (streaming outweighs downloads about 8:1). The Gadget Show this week had an interesting test of HD content on Apple TV vs Blu-ray which kind of illustrates my thinking in that at 4 hours to download the HD movie it was far quicker to go and get it from the video shop. If it was streamable then I'm sure it would be a different story.

So it looks as though some customers are using their increased usage allowance to download a few things during the day when previously they may have scheduled it to download overnight (or not downloaded it at all).

By: axisofevil

axisofevil — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:46:32 +0000

All that effort playing with a flashy web site could have been better spent in developing a Linux friendly downloader.

By: talpa

talpa — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:29:13 +0000

On a network that prioritises streaming over P2P, and on which you've acknowledged that there's been an increase in streaming traffic - wouldn't you expect that the volume of P2P traffic would decrease, because it's being limited more heavily in favour of streaming et al.

I don't think it's necessarily fair to interpret your stats as a decrease in "demand"...

Thoughts?

By: s_d_c

s_d_c — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:12:55 +0000

Nice blog Dave, as always

Have you seen much effect of the increased allowances on the BBYW products (downloading habits changing from off-peak to peak)?

Do you expect to see much impact from the E3 announcements for PS3/360 with respect to downloadable movie content / renting via NetFlix?