The share of internet traffic in France mobilized for Netflix is ​​just staggering

ARCEP, which published its report on the state of the Internet in France on Thursday, underlines the colossal share of the digital giants, Netflix (largely) in the lead.

Tell yourself that more than half of internet traffic in France comes from players who deliver video content. And the first of them is none other than the giant Netflix, the source alone of nearly 20% of French traffic. This is in any case what underlines the report on the state of the Internet in the country published Thursday by the Telecoms Regulatory Authority (ARCEP), with data stopped at the end of last December.

Netflix, a major source of French internet traffic

If we break down the data, we see that 51% of traffic to customers of the main French access providers comes from five providers, all video content players: Netflix, Google, Akamai, Facebook and Amazon. . Over the years, the trend of concentrating more traffic in the hands of more and more players continues to grow stronger.

But there is a trend within a trend, a kind of mise en abyme that puts Netflix in a category of its own. Reed Hastings’ video streaming service is widening the gap in traffic volume with other content providers. It thus weighs for 21% of French internet traffic, ahead of Google (11%), Akamai (which helps with the distribution of Disney+), Facebook, then Amazon, which are between 8 and 5%.

Incoming traffic to French ISPs Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free increased by more than 25% in one year, from 28.4 Tbits/s at the end of 2020 to 35.6 Tbits/s at the end of 2021. There are three years, this incoming traffic at the interconnection to the main French ISPs was less than 15 Tbits/s.

Half of this traffic comes from transit links, in which Orange is the main player. The incumbent operates as a forwarding agent, ie an international network manager. This is also the case of AT&T, NTT Communications, PCCW, Deutsche Telekom AG, Verizon or Tata Communications. All have developed a long-distance network and have direct interconnections with other major operators around the world.

The question (without solution?) of video codecs

Several elements explain this growing consumption and the growing weight of Netflix or, to a lesser extent, of Google, via YouTube. First, there is the sharp rise in video streaming as a whole, but also the need for ever-lower latency and optimal video/audio quality.

ARCEP also makes a very useful parenthesis on codecs and their role in the routing of video streams, throwing a stone into the pond. As a reminder, a codec is a device which makes it possible to implement the encoding and decoding of a data stream. It makes it possible to reduce the weight of this transmitted stream.

Today, the majority of global internet traffic is compressed video data. The majority video code is particularly well known to video editors: the famous H.264/AVC. However, there are new generation codecs that can more than halve the size of video streams, and therefore reduce traffic and energy consumption.

Except that the more efficient codecs (HEVC, VP9, ​​AV1) can generate incompatibilities and cause the content host to fall into a spiral of demultiplication of encodings, which is not viable on any level.

To reduce traffic, and without defined regulations that could lead to sanctions, it will therefore be necessary to wait. The probable generalization of content in 4K and/or better sound quality will not help the supporters of this noble objective.

Source : ARCEP