Study: Netflix streaming eats up 35% of downstream internet bandwidth

Netflix's video-streaming service continues to be the most bandwidth-hungry application on the Internet, now accounting for a whopping 34.9% of all downstream traffic during peak periods on North American broadband networks, according to a new study. [...] Amazon.com's Instant Video represented 2.6% of peak downstream traffic in North America this fall. While that's still far less than Netflix, Amazon's video service has more than doubled its share of bandwidth consumption in the past 18 months, [...] Hulu's share of primetime downstream traffic stood at 1.4%, down slightly from 1.7% in the first half of 2014. [...] The study found BitTorrent Inc. file-sharing traffic continues to drop as an overall percentage of bandwidth consumption, representing 2.8% of peak-period downstream traffic in North America. Over all, BitTorrent accounts for 5% of bandwidth usage in the region -- down from 31% in 2008. In the Asia-Pacific region, however, BitTorrent still represents more than 33% of total traffic, according to Sandvine. Todd Spangler,Variety via Boston Herald [via/web:http://streaming-tv.us]