Internet traffic
Internet traffic is the flow of data within the entire Internet, or in certain network links of its constituent networks. Common traffic measurements are total volume, in units of multiples of the byte, or as transmission rates in bytes per certain time units.
For the amount of data sent and received by visitors of a particular web site, see web traffic.
As the topology of the Internet is not hierarchical, no single point of measurement is possible for total Internet traffic. Traffic data may be obtained from the Tier 1 network providers' peering points for indications of volume and growth. However, Such data excludes traffic that remains within a single service provider's network and traffic that crosses private peering points.
As of December 2022 almost half (48%) of Internet traffic is in India and China, while North America and Europe have about a quarter of global internet traffic.[1]
Traffic sources[edit]
File sharing constitutes a fraction of Internet traffic.[2] The prevalent technology for file sharing is the BitTorrent protocol, which is a peer-to-peer (P2P) system mediated through indexing sites that provide resource directories. According to a Sandvine Research in 2013, Bit Torrent's share of Internet traffic decreased by 20% to 7.4% overall, reduced from 31% in 2008. [3]
As of 2023, roughly 65% of all internet traffic came from video sites,[4] up from 51% in 2016.[5]
In 2022, roughly 47% of all traffic was estimated to be from automated bots.[6]
Internet use tax[edit]
A planned tax on Internet use in Hungary introduced a 150-forint (US$0.62, €0.47) tax per gigabyte of data traffic, in a move intended to reduce Internet traffic and also assist companies to offset corporate income tax against the new levy.[8] Hungary achieved 1.15 billion gigabytes in 2013 and another 18 million gigabytes accumulated by mobile devices. This would have resulted in extra revenue of 175 billion forints under the new tax based on the consultancy firm eNet.[8]
According to Yahoo News, economy minister Mihály Varga defended the move saying "the tax was fair as it reflected a shift by consumers to the Internet away from phone lines" and that "150 forints on each transferred gigabyte of data – was needed to plug holes in the 2015 budget of one of the EU's most indebted nations".[9]
Some people argue that the new plan on Internet tax would prove disadvantageous to the country's economic development, limit access to information and hinder the freedom of expression.[10] Approximately 36,000 people have signed up to take part in an event on Facebook to be held outside the Economy Ministry to protest against the possible tax.[9]
Edholm's law[edit]
In the past Internet bandwidth in telecommunications networks doubled every 18 months, an observation expressed as Edholm's law.[32] This follows the advances in semiconductor technology, such as metal-oxide-silicon (MOS) scaling, exemplified by the MOSFET transistor, which has shown similar scaling described by Moore's law. In the 1980s, fiber-optical technology using laser light as information carriers accelerated the transmission speed and bandwidth of telecommunication circuits. This has led to the bandwidths of communication networks achieving terabit per second transmission speeds.[33]