A tiny segment of Internet users generate almost half of all Internet traffic, according to data from Internet traffic management company Ellacoya. In monitoring traffic across different networks, the company analyzed the data of about 2 million Internet users from August to December of 2006 in order to categorize them into five groups: "bandwidth hogs," "power users," "up and comers," "middle children," and "barely users." As it turns out, bandwidth hogs only make up about 5 percent of the entire Internet-using audience, but generate about 43.5 percent of the total traffic. Conversely, another 40 percent of users—the barely users—make very light use of the Internet and only generate about 3.8 percent of traffic. The remaining 55 percent of users generate the remaining 50 percent of traffic.
What in the world are the bandwidth hogs doing to generate all of that traffic? It appears as if VoIP is significantly more popular among bandwidth hogs than with the light users, with 41.9 percent of the heavy traffic group using some sort of VoIP service by December—an increase of 0.4 percent from August. The barely users—while not using VoIP as heavily as the hogs—picked up on VoIP at a much faster rate between August and December, jumping from 1.0 to 5.5 percent of total users in that period of time. The second lowest group, middle children, had an even faster adoption rate increase, jumping from 4.2 percent of users trying VoIP to 12.3 percent.
Ellacoya's Vice President of Marketing and Product Management Fred Sammartino told Ars that he believes that VoIP service usage seems to be growing because of the niche appeal, not necessarily because it's a good service. "There appears to be artificial cap at 42 percent with the bandwidth hogs. Something about VoIP is stopping them from breaking through that barrier, and we think that it's the quality of the service," he said. Lots of people are trying VoIP, Sammartino explained, but perhaps not liking it very much because the quality still isn't as good as landlines or even cell service. "It's not a technology that's going to cap out at 100 percent in its current state," he told Ars.
