BitTorrent traffic increased by 40% in North America over the past half-year, according to new data published by the Canadian broadband management company Sandvine.
During peak hours BitTorrent is credited for more than a third of all upload traffic, while film site Netflix accounts for 28% of all downstream traffic during the same period, reports TorrentFreak.
However, BitTorrent traffic now accounts for a smaller percentage of total internet traffic due to the latter growing at a faster rate during the past few months.
The file-sharing site is now responsible for 10.31% of all North US internet traffic during peak hours, compared to 11.3% six months ago and 17.3% two years ago.
Netflix is by far the leading application in terms of bandwidth consumption, accounting for 28.8% of all internet traffic during the busiest times of the day.
In common with North America, BitTorrent also remains the most-used file-sharing protocol in Europe. Bandwidth usage patterns during peak hours show that of 31.8% of upstream traffic can be attributed to BitTorrent, versus 12.1% of downstream traffic.
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