[RTC List] List Digest, Vol 84, Issue 2

[William Van Hefner]

Marc,

There aren't a lot of hard numbers when it comes to overall bandwidth
consumption on the Internet, but most of the studies I have seen show P2P
applications to be using up the greatest amount of bandwidth of any single
protocol. Web usage is generally cited as second, which includes sites
that stream audio and video. YouTube alone is often cited as using up
approximately 10% of the Internet's total bandwidth.

The best study I can recall seeing recently was produced by Sandvine. You
can download the report as an Adobe Acrobat file at
http://www.sandvine.com/general/documents/Traffic_Demographics_NA_Broadband_Networks.pdf

Last I checked, P2P was not used in many "legitimate" business
applications. Honestly, the only "legit" P2P traffic I can think of is as
a way of distributing various, open source applications, and that
definitely is a VERY small percentage of P2P traffic.

Telemedicine uses a disproportionate amount of bandwidth, compared to most
business applications. While I understand that you may personally have a
lot of customers in that field, those users are definitely the exception
to Internet usage, not the rule. What percentage of businesses in Humboldt
County are devoted to medicine, as opposed to all other business sectors?
It would be a relatively small percentage, I would guess. In any event,
such use doesn't seem to amount to much in studies, when compared to
competing protocols.

There's another interesting study at
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2006_March_20/ai_n16109780/
showing that Internet business use at work is mostly comprised of
production-draining applications and web sites that employees use to "goof
off" on company time. Government employees are the biggest time wasters.
Big surprise!!! I'm guessing that business OWNERS spend a heck of a lot
less time goofing off. Unfortunately, time-wasting employees far outnumber
business owners. The most interesting statistic was:

"78.1 percent of all users accessed the Internet while at work for
personal use and entertainment (resulting in more than 20 percent of all
pages viewed, viewing time and bandwidth costs)"

Kind of puts things in perspective, eh?


-- 
William Van Hefner - President
Vantek Communications, Inc.
http://www.humboldtonline.com
e-mail: editor at humboldtonline.com

On Fri, May 1, 2009 3:15 pm, Marc Chaton wrote:
> Wow...William...what are your business customer's doing or should I say
> not doing online?  Ours sure are using the increases in bandwidth and
> could use a lot more.  They are doing tele-medicine, video conferencing,
> working at home connecting to their office networks at reasonable rates,
> training their staff online and more and more each day.  Most of that was
> not possible when people were using 56k modems.  And more and more of the
> new technology takes advantage of more and more bandwidth.  And as much
> as we would all like to think this new technologies make them more
> efficient, they still need more people on staff to use this new
> technology...especially as they convert from paper-based to digital. 
> That means more jobs, and yes...more jobs in our communities.
>  
> Granted, there are a lot of home users downloading movies, games, porn
> etc.  But that is not all of where the increased bandwidth is going.  And
> porn technology sure has spured development and enhancement of technology
> since the days of video and VCR...not that I condone porn.  I would like
> to see the "statistical facts" you are siting...especially during
> daytime/business hours.  
> Anyway, I don't mean to be attacking you or anything, William.  I am just
> saying our customers are using and needing more and more bandwidth to
> take advantage of the new tools and technologies they are starting and
> wanting to use.  Plus, with the stimulus monies becoming available for
> the Healthcare industry (especially rural healthcare...our market)...we
> are able to move more and more smaller doctor offices and clinics
> getting into these technologies...all needing more bandwidth!  
> Bring it on!
>  
> Marc Chaton
> Infinite Consulting Services, Inc.