Ars Technica recently discussed the effect YouTube has had on the popularity of P2P networking. According to a study done by Ellacoya Networks, HTTP traffic has surpassed P2P protocols as the dominant form of Internet downloads for the first time in four years. Considering my recent discussion of the top protocols found on a residential broadband network, I thought it would be interesting to find out if Slaptijack readers knew of this before the rest of the world!

Below is the graph that Ars Technica generated from the Ellacoya Networks data. It shows that HTTP accounts for 46% of traffic with P2P trailing at 36%.

The top ten protocol list generated from our Cisco NBAR data included three different P2P protocols: gnutella, edonkey, and bittorrent.

This rather hideous Excel-generated graph shows that HTTP accounts for 46% of the download traffic generated by average residential broadband users. The combined P2P protocols account for only 25%.

Since we're only using the top 10 protocols, the percentages are really just estimates, but the results confirm the findings of the Ellacoya Networks report. HTTP downloads have certainly surpassed P2P protocols as the dominant form of download traffic in a typical broadband network.