Netflix consumes most of the world's internet traffic

Netflix consumes 15 per cent of global internet traffic, according to a report on the Global Internet Phenomena by bandwidth management company Sandvine.

Movie and TV shows fans are using the most amount of the internet. Together it makes up around 58 per cent of the downstream traffic across the entire internet.



“Netflix could easily be 3x their current volume," the report states. According to the study, Netflix could consume even more bandwidth if it didn’t compress the videos. Sandvine looks at the file size of on various streaming services.

Downloading a movie via iTunes makes the size between 1.68 GB and 4.6 GB depending on the quality. On Amazon Prime, films of the same length are around 1.5 GB in size. However, on Netflix, it takes around 459 MB.



The report further states miscellaneous video embed categorising HTTP Media Streams make up around 13.1 per cent of all internet traffic while YouTube comes in third with only 11.4 per cent data consumed.

Furthermore, general web browsing takes up to 17 per cent of the global data use with gaming using only 7.8 per cent but expected to rise. Internet usage for all social media platforms take up to 5.1 per cent of the world’s web traffic.