According to German Internet traffic management systems provider ipoque, file-sharing services take up to 95% of Internet traffic.

The study was made on three petabytes of anonymous data representing over one million users in Australia, Eastern Europe, Germany, the Middle East and Southern Europe and unlike last year, this year’s study also includes data about Internet telephony (VoIP), Skype, video streaming, instant messaging (IM), file hosting and encrypted P2P protocols.

The study concludes that just as last year, file-sharing is the most used service on the Internet. Its average share varies between 49 percent in the Middle East and 84 percent in Eastern Europe with the most usage being observed during the nighttime, when the percentage rises up to 95% of the total Internet traffic. An interesting new observation was made by ipoque as for the first time they studied encrypted P2P protocols. The encrypted P2P protocols are used by people who want to evade evade traffic shaping techniques and blocking by network operators. It seems that about 20 percent of file-sharing traffic is already encrypted.

Although voice over IP (VoIP) is used by only one percent of the Internet traffic, it is used by 30 percent of all users with Skype being by far the most popular Internet telephony application.

Joost does not yet have a significant relevance, despite its high media presence. Quite the opposite can be said about Flash movies embedded in Web sites like YouTube, which produced considerably more traffic. This and other forms of video streaming generated eight percent of the Internet traffic during the measurement period.

A relatively new file sharing phenomenon are file hosting services, also known as one-click file hosters, such as RapidShare and MegaUpload. Although file hosters are only used by a relatively small number of Internet users, they are responsible for between four and nine percent of all Internet traffic.