In the latest report, Netflix remained the primary source of peak download traffic, at 35.2 percent. This is down slightly from 37.1 percent six months earlier, due to Netflix enhancing its compression techniques. YouTube came second, both in download and upload traffic, at respectively 17.53 percent and 13.13 percent. Amazon Video moved up to third place, from eighth a year ago, accounting for 4.26 percent of peak download traffic.
Sandvine noted that cloud storage (Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, etc.) has surpassed file-sharing as the largest source of peak upstream traffic in North America. BitTorrent now accounts for less than 5 percent of total daily traffic in the region.
It also noted an increasing share of traffic going to streaming music services. However, the fragmented market means none of the major providers were in the top ten applications. Sling TV, which allows users to stream some cable channels online without the need for a traditional cable subscription, accounted for less than 1 percent of peak downstream traffic, but for the first time was among the top 20 applications on most networks.
