|
According to the House Judiciary committee's study on Internet file sharing, each month, on average, over 2.3
billion digital-media files are transferred among users of peer-to-peer systems. The most popular peer-to-peer file
trading software programs have been downloaded by computer users over 200,000,000 times. At any one time there are
over 3 million users simultaneously using just one peer-to-peer file sharing service.
The number of people sharing files on the P2P networks in America is rising, and doing so very noticeably.
In the US in November, 2003, on average, 2,498,431 were logged on at the same time at any given point in the day
or night. By November, 2004, on average, 5,445,275 people were online at any one time. By November this year, the
number had risen to 6,530,408. (Source: http://p2pnet.net/story/7369)
Average Simultaneous Global P2P Users
| MONTHLY |
GLOBAL |
| August, 2003 |
3,847,565 |
| September, 2003 |
4,319,182 |
| October, 2003 |
6,142,507 |
| November, 2003 |
4,392,816 |
| December, 2003 |
5,602,384 |
| January, 2004 |
6,046,998 |
| February, 2004 |
6,831,366 |
| March, 2004 |
7,370,644 |
| April, 2004 |
7,639,479 |
| May, 2004 |
7,286,377 |
| June, 2004 |
7,401,431 |
| July, 2004 |
7,115,975 |
| August, 2004 |
6,822,312 |
| September, 2004 |
6,784,574 |
| October, 2004 |
6,255,986 |
| November, 2004 |
7,452,184 |
| December, 2004 |
7,582,248 |
| January, 2005 |
8,385,612 |
| February, 2005 |
8,524,938 |
| March, 2005 |
8,282,986 |
| April, 2005 |
8,629,307 |
| May, 2005 |
8,665,319 |
| June, 2005 |
8,888,436 |
| July, 2005 |
9,496,203 |
| August, 2005 |
9,620,261 |
| September, 2005 |
9,284,558 |
| October, 2005 |
9,168,812 |
| November, 2005 |
9,465,625 |
Source (http://p2pnet.net/story/7196)
P2P file-sharing in general represents a substantial proportion of Internet traffic. A study
by network monitoring appliance vendor, released in July 2004, found that
P2P is the largest consumer of data on Internet service provider (ISP) networks, and is still growing. CacheLogic is one of a new breed of vendors whose equipment is capable
of deep packet inspection at the application layer, allowing it to monitor and differentiate
P2P applications more finely than previously possible. In a single 30-day period, one
CacheLogic appliance tracked P2P accesses from 3.5 million unique IP addresses.
CacheLogic estimates the worldwide simultaneous P2P users’ base at 10 million – over
10% of all broadband accounts. And those users are sharing over 10,000,000,000
Megabytes (10 petabytes) of data. (The Implications of Video P2P on Network Usage
By Kevin Werbach)
A recent survey by the Internet research firm IT Innovations & Concepts (ITIC; www.itic.ca) indicates that 81 million Internet
users worldwide engage in some form of P2P file sharing. Furthermore, says the study, in 2003, the US downloaded more digital songs
(4.4 billion) than any other nation on the planet—an ignominious distinction, to say the least.
|
