BitTorrent says Netflix is hogging bandwidth - not 'beating' it

[FAGuru]

Research suggesting that Netflix is responsible for a third of US peak time download traffic is nothing to be proud of, argues BitTorrent, the company best known for creating a peer-to-peer download protocol widely used to share music and movies.

The report, produced by Sandvine, shows Netflix to be responsible for almost a third of all US downstream traffic at peak times, with YouTube contributing another 18%. Compared to the streaming video services, BitTorrent's portion of traffic is minuscule, at just over 4%.

 

The bittorrent protocol has a much larger share of upstream traffic, due to its peer-to-peer nature. Almost every file downloaded using bittorrent is downloaded from another user's computer, rather than from a central server. Even so, in the aggregated upload and download data, Netflix remains the biggest user of traffic by a large margin.

However, BitTorrent argues that the data doesn't show the domination of Netflix, but rather the incredible inefficiency of the site's service.

"Netflix is hogging all of the bandwidth in North America," BitTorrent's vice president of marketing, Matt Mason said in an exclusive interview with The Guardian. "This is a problem for Netflix. They're talking about [the super-high-definition TV format] 4K, but they're crushing the network already; if they deliver 4K they're going to completely grind it to a halt. All the ISPs are pissed at Netflix, because this is an unsustainable situation.

"It's always been funny to us that Netflix go 'oh, yeah, look, we're beating BitTorrent' – meaning 'we're beating piracy'. They're not beating piracy. It's definitely a good thing that there's a legitimate service that's available, and I'm sure that's helping on some level."

Mason also hit out at reports that have used this data to declare BitTorrent finished. "This bandwidth thing is a complete red herring, and I think Netflix knows that. I'm also disappointed more analysts don't understand." 

Mason argues that a partnership between Netflix and BitTorrent would be in both companies' interest. "Netflix traffic is hogging the network, [whereas] BitTorrent traffic voluntarily gives way to Skype, Netflix, everything else, because we saw that as the right thing to do. We're being good citizens on the internet.

"There's so many ways you could do Netflix better using BitTorrent, and the reason they haven't done it is because, in their initial dealings with Hollywood, BitTorrent was the pariah they had to beat. We're the straw-man of the internet.

"If you go on their website right now, in the jobs section, they're hiring a bunch of peer-to-peer engineers. They need BitTorrent, and we'd be happy to work with them, but all this stuff about them beating us is, quite frankly, bullshit. They're not beating us, we're getting out of everybody's way because it's the right thing to do."