What Exactly Do We All Do On The Internet?

Entertain ourselves, real time. According to a report by Sandvine, Real-time entertainment (streamed or buffered real time audio and video) is unquestionably the dominant driver of data consumption on fixed and mobile networks worldwide, and is still growing substantially; up to 43% of total Internet traffic is real-time entertainment, up significantly from past studies.

And dont miss this data point: According to Sandvine, Netflix accounts for 20 percent of downstream Internet traffic during peak home Internet usage hours in North America. That's an amazing share—it beats that of YouTube, iTunes, Hulu, and, perhaps most tellingly, the peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol BitTorrent, which accounts for a mere 8 percent of bandwidth during peak hours.

Statistics Source: SandVine Report and Slate