The Bandwidth Hog
The Bandwidth Hog - may sound like an extreme term however, bandwidth on any network is a valuable commodity and IT Professionals agree that anything that consumes large amounts bandwidth or causes substantial network traffic congestion or latency “must be avoided.”
Facts on Bandwidth - Internet users consumed more bandwidth than ever last year, driven by the growing popularity of peer-to-peer networks and heightened demand for video files. Researchers have singled out peer-to-peer file trading as the single fastest-growing consumer of network capacity. The amount of traffic from peer-to-peer trading fare exceeds that generated by all other regular web surfing. Growing demand for data-rich files, such as movies, is further boosting bandwidth consumption.
In an article published in June 2008, peer-to-peer file-sharing applications represented 44% of all bandwidth consumed on networks operated by North American Internet service providers in 2007, according to a survey by Sandvine (a vendor of bandwidth-management systems for IP service providers)
The three biggest overall generators of Internet traffic are:
- Peer-to-Peer File Sharing (43.5%)
- Web Browsing (27.3%)
- Streaming Media (14.8%)
While ISPs aren’t suffering from a shortage of bandwidth, P2P applications that are being run on a corporate or educational network can really be a headache.
Legitimate P2P Networks such as Bit Torrents used in research or the P2P commonly used for VOIP, normally allow for automatic or adjustable scaling of the bandwidth they use or consume. Voice over internet protocol or VOIP calls for example, typically require a data-transmission rate of less than 30 Kbps compared to more than 300 Kbps for a video file.
Other P2P Applications that millions use each day to share music or videos and other content are designed to take control of as much bandwidth as they can, in order to improve the performance of the file sharing experience. This may provide a pleasant experience for the individual attempting to download or share a 1.5 GB movie however it would be an absolute nightmare for a corporate or institutional IT administrator.