The Global InternetPhenomena ReportOctober 2018Welcome to the New Phenomena ReportId like to reintroduce you to the Sandvine Global Internet Phenomena Report! We have worked hard on this edition to bring you a comprehensive view of what is happening on the internet to help the industry as a whole get a reality check on how the hype on specific applications translates to network impact. With the attention of both consumers and network operators focused on network quality, it is more important than ever for operators to understand how their bandwidth is being consumed.This edition of the report will cover both global macro and regional micro views of the composition of traffic on the internet. Sandvines value proposition to our customers is the accuracy and granularity of our network intelligence, so we focus on identifying as many applications as we can, despite how the internet is becoming more encrypted. Why is this important? When networks get congested (and they always end up congested), the solution to the problem depends on the root cause. That sounds logical, but network operators are limited today by both regulatory issues and a lack of visibility, and are struggling to retain the visibility that they need to make the right network investments that deliver a high quality experience to their subscribers. Different applications require different network resources to achieve good quality, and without accurate visibility into network traffic composition, network operators cannot deliver for consumers.The Global Internet Phenomena Report ranks applications based on their “traffic share.” The fascinating data that fuels the report illustrates the disconnect between “market share” for companies defined by subscriber counts and how often subscribers use a service. Traffic share is defined as the percentage of network resources used by a specific application relative to other applications.For Global and Regional overall reports, we rank all applications that Sandvine can see. For the Spotlight reports, we compare applications of a specific type (streaming video, messaging, etc.) to see which ones lead their categories.Cam Cullen, VP of Marketing, SandvineA word from Lyn Cantor, CEO, SandvineThe new Sandvine is a combination of the former Sandvine and Procera businesses, now fully integrated and aligned as a global leader in the Network Intelligence market segment. Our customer base represents over 150 T1 and T2 global network operators and our solutions touch over 2.1B internet subscribers worldwide. The foundation of our business model is being the best telco network data analytics company with use cases that help our customers understand, optimize, and manage subscriber quality of experience (QoE). Fundamentally, our objective is to always provide the best vendor agnostic granularity and accuracy for the data flowing across our customers networks and help them intelligently act on that data.You will see an ongoing commitment to deliver the pre-eminent view of global trends and distilled insights on what our operator eco-system sees and manages in terms of services delivered to subscribers. As our global reach continues to expand across fixed, mobile, cable, satellite, and WiFi network domains, we will bring you viewpoints on the latest trends and special topics through our report series.Our goal with this report is to inform the global community on the Internet Phenomena we live in every day and to expose both challenges and opportunities to build a more collaborative eco-system, providing a robust connected experience for subscribers.We hope you will enjoy the report as well as the enhanced presentation of the data. If you have any suggestions on how we can make this report better, we would appreciate your input. Please feel free to reach out to phenomenasandvine.Lyn Cantor, CEO, SandvineAbout the Global Internet Phenomena DataThe data in this edition of the Global Internet Phenomena Report is drawn from Sandvines installed base of over 150 Tier 1 and Tier 2 fixed and mobile operators worldwide. The report does not include significant data from either China or India, but the data represents a portion of Sandvines 2.1B subscribers installed base, a statistically significant segment of the internet population.This edition combines fixed and mobile data into a single comprehensive view of internet traffic across all network types. A future edition will break out separate fixed and mobile traffic composition.Within each section, Sandvine measured the global traffic share for applications from several different perspectives: Downstream: This is the traffic volume downloaded from the internet. Examples would be a video stream, a file download, or an app download from iTunes.Upstream: This is the traffic volume uploaded to the internet. It could be requests for content (i.e., browsing the Netflix library), an interactive messaging session, or a Twitch stream of a gaming session from a console.Connections: This represents the number of “conversations” occurring for an application. Some applications use a single connection for all traffic, others (like Netflix, BitTorrent, or Pokemon Go) use many connections to transfer data or video to the end user.Welcome!2The Global InternetPhenomena ReportOctober 2018Copyright © 2018 Sandvine. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.Section 1: Global News Section 3: SpotlightsHIGHLIGHTS IN THIS EDITION A brief overview of some of key findings in this issue of the Global Internet Phenomena Report.EXECUTIVE OVERVIEWWhat are the phenomena that are dominating the internet in 2018? You can bet the video streaming is one, but which video providers, and what other applications are heating up? GLOBAL APPLICATION TRAFFIC SHARE What application categories are the leading consumers of internet bandwidth? The real question is how much traffic on the internet is video?GLOBAL APPLICATION RANKINGSDrilling a bit deeper, what specific applications are internet users engaging with and spending their valuable gigabytes on? The usual suspects are on the lists, but in what order?GLOBAL TRENDS: BEYOND THE TOP 10What happens outside the top 10? With over 5300 signatures present in this Global Internet Phenomena Report, there are bound to be some interesting factoids out there. We look at Nest thermostats, Alexa versus Siri, Ethereum and Bitcoin, as well as some other apps that caught the eye in the data.SPOTLIGHT STREAMING VIDEO Not all regions are created equal when it comes to streaming video traffic share. Netflix and YouTube are everywhere, but local streaming is increasing.SPOTLIGHT GAMINGWhat individual games are generating the most traffic on networks? Since the number of players does not always align with traffic share, we look at each region to determine the winners.SPOTLIGHT SOCIAL NETWORKINGFacebook or Instagram? What about Snapchat? Or VK and YouKu? Although the leaders are obvious, there are some surprising names that pop up in this edition.SPOTLIGHT MESSAGINGSkype is the global traffic share in messaging, but there are other strong contenders not far behind that may shift the share rankings in the next edition.SPOTLIGHT STREAMING AUDIO“And the winner in streaming audio is.Spotify.” The market share numbers for streaming audio do not align with the traffic share, so what services are being used by consumers more often? INFOGRAPHIC COLLECTION AND RESOURCESWant to use some of this data? We have a handy collection of resources to simplify re-use of the data in the Phenomena report, as well as links to more information if you have questions for us.AMERICAS DOWNSTREAM TRAFFIC SHARENetflix once again takes the Americas crown, despite improvements in efficiency, video traffic management, and increased competition. Who else is in the top 10?AMERICAS UPSTREAM TRAFFIC SHAREVideo is the top upstream source of traffic in the Americas how can that be?SPOTLIGHT: CONNECTED FITNESS Ever heard of Peloton? If you run a network, you should check it out.EMEA DOWNSTREAM TRAFFIC SHAREGaming is having major impact on networks in EMEA, with 3 in the top 10. EMEA UPSTREAM TRAFFIC SHARE BitTorrent leads EMEA upstream traffic share by a large margin.SPOTLIGHT: WORLD CUP 2018 The 2018 World Cup was a major force on the internet, with impact felt not only with the games themselves streaming online, but also in social networking and other video streaming sites. APAC DOWNSTREAM TRAFFIC SHARESocial networking is a driving force in APAC networking, with Facebook Video leading YouTube. APAC UPSTREAM TRAFFIC SHARE P2P applications besides BitTorrent make an appearance in the Phenomena report in APAC.SPOTLIGHT: GOOGLE How dominant is Google in APAC? It has over 40% of all connections in the region.Section OverviewThe Global InternetPhenomena ReportOctober 20183Copyright © 2018 Sandvine. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.Section 2: Regional NewsHighlights in this edition The Global InternetPhenomena ReportOctober 20184Copyright © 2018 Sandvine. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.Video is almostof the total downstream volume of traffic on the internet58%isof the total downstream volume of traffic across the entire internet15%of internet traffic is encrypted, and TLS 1.3 adoption is growingMore than50%is becoming a significant force in traffic volume as gaming downloads, Twitch streaming, and professional gaming go mainstreamGAMING22%31%BITTORRENT is almostof total upstream volume of traffic, and overin EMEA aloneAlphabet /applications make up over of the total internet connections in APAC40%Plus spotlights on:Traffic share leaders for video, social networking, messaging, audio streaming, and gamingHIGHLIGHTS IN THIS EDITIONThe trends driving the internet this year are showing significant changes from previous years: Video is still dominant with almost 58% of overall downstream traffic, despite operators more aggressively managing video traffic. Over 50% of traffic on the internet is encrypted, and it will continue to grow. The majority of web traffic is encrypted, and more applications are leveraging secure connections from end-to-end. Gaming is becoming a significant contributor to traffic. More games are delivering a good mobile experience and are designed with ubiquitous connectivity, capturing more mind share with consumers. File sharing is not dead. With more content choices and channels than ever before, consumers do not have good options to get access to all the content that may interest them and are still resorting to piracy. Live events are beginning to have a noticeable effect on networks. The World Cup and Super Bowl generate spikes in networks worldwide, exceeding YouTube and other video applications.The internet is more diverse than everPrevious Global Internet Phenomena reports highlighted a few applications that dominated the world scene: Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, and BitTorrent were the biggest historical traffic sources. All of those applications are still big players, but the internet landscape has significantly diversified; regional variations are showing up throughout this report, creating a new tenet for network operators that “all internet trends are local.” If there is one common theme to this Global Internet Phenomena, it is that the traffic on the internet is more encrypted than ever. A conservative estimate of the data shows that over 50% of the traffic on the internet is encrypted. Some applications are not always encrypted, and Sandvine did not count these as part of that 50% number. Even with the conservative view, TLS traffic has grown (showing a shift to a more secure protocol than SSL). For consumers, this is great their traffic has better privacy than ever before. This does not protect them from hacks or data breaches, but at least ensures that their traffic cannot be “read” by anyone that gets access to network traffic, especially with the increasing use of public WiFi connectivity.For network operators, this trend creates a huge challenge. Network operators fixed, mobile, WiFi, and even satellite need to understand the composition of traffic (not the content) so that they can build out a network capable of meeting a consumers quality expectations. With a higher percentage of traffic encrypted every day, operators are struggling to gain a holistic view of their networks. We will talk quite a bit about video in this report, but it is important to highlight the diversity of video streaming traffic around the world. Although Netflix and YouTube are still the largest names in streaming (as you will see in the reports) there is an ever growing number of other streaming providers capturing consumer screen time.This video diversity trend has led directly to the continued relevance of file sharing, which is still a major source of internet traffic. Consumers that cannot afford to subscribe to all of the different services turn to file sharing to get the latest content, even as governments attempt to shut down sharing sites.Gaming traffic continues to grow. This report has a specific highlight on gaming, which is now the third largest contributor to downstream bandwidth usage.Finally, live events are registering on the “internet Richter scale,” causing major traffic spikes during the World Cup and Super Bowl. These traffic spikes are truly “local,” and they need to be planned for by operators, or else quality of experience (QoE) will suffer for consumers.Executive OverviewThe Global InternetPhenomena ReportOctober 20185Encrypted TrafficUnencrypted TrafficOver 50% of the traffic on the internet is encryptedFile sharing is not dead: BitTorrent is #1 in Europe and APAC, and #2 in Americas for upstream bandwidth consumption.#1#1#2Copyright © 2018 Sandvine. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.GLOBAL APPLICATION CATEGORY TRAFFIC SHAREVIDEO STREAMING 57.69% 22.43% WEB 17.01% 20.98% GAMING 7.78% 2.68% SOCIAL 5.10% 3.73% MARKETPLACE 4.61% 1.90% FILE SHARING 2.84% 22.05% MESSAGING 1.72% 8.12% SECURITY 1.41% 7.48% STORAGE 1.41% 9.37% AUDIO STREAMING 1.05% 0.46% Video is bigger than everIt is not a surprise that streaming video is the top application type on the internet. If you had asked anyone what category of application they thought would be at the top, video would win by a landslide. What might not have been expected is the gains that other application types have made even while video continues to drive downstream bandwidth usage. Gaming has gained in relevance, and file sharing has experienced a bit of a resurgence. Streaming Video: Streaming video includes not only over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services like Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime, but also operator-based streaming and direct consumer streaming. Many operators offer streaming of the content tha