Popcorn Time Traffic Doesn’t Rival Traditional Torrents Just Yet

[shamu726]

Thanks to its slick and easy-to-use interface, Popcorn Time has gained an impressive user base since it launched early last year. However, fresh data now shows that the application still has some ground to cover if it wants to rival uTorrent, which remains the king of BitTorrent traffic.

Branded a “Netflix for Pirates,” the Popcorn Time app quickly gathered a user base of millions of people over the past year.

The application has some of the major media giants worried, including Netflix which sees the pirate app as a serious competitor to its business.

Popcorn Time is also a rival for traditional torrent clients such as uTorrent, albeit of a different kind. However, until now how these different types of BitTorrent traffic compare in volume terms has remained unknown.

New data from network management company Procera sheds some light on how the two stack up against each other. Procera gathered data from a European fixed line network in March and April and shared their findings with TF.

On this particular network, which has a capacity of dozens of Gigabits per second, Popcorn Time accounted for roughly 18 Gigabit per second at its peak. The traffic was lowest at night, dropping to nearly zero.

All the traffic in question was generated by ‘traditional’ video torrents which were then streamed through the Popcorn Time app.

Popcorn Time traffic

The data above comes from one network, so the numbers are not very meaningful without a good comparison standard. For this reason, Procera also monitored the traffic generated by uTorrent.

The graph below shows that uTorrent accounts for at least double the traffic compared to Popcorn Time, with a approximately 44 Gigabit per second at the peak in April.

uTorrent traffic

While the vast majority of uTorrent traffic is generated by video, it’s worth noting that the data above also includes transfers of software, music and other content.

Non-uTorrent BitTorrent transfers were insignificant according to Procera, well below the traffic Popcorn Time generates.

The traffic patterns observed on this European network may be different in other parts of the world. However, with Popcorn Time having a massive user base in Europe, it’s safe to conclude that the app is not rivaling traditional torrent yet, traffic-wise.

It will be interesting to see if Popcorn Time will continue to grow during the coming year. The application is now available on all major operating systems and it’s not unthinkable that it will eventually catch up with uTorrent.

Source: TorrentFreak

[steven36]

µTorrent is not king its the #2 used client in the world 1# used client is Xunlei from china .

µTorrent it is the most widely used BitTorrent client outside China; globally only behind Xunlei

And I wonder how many users of there 100 million users has even updated in the last 4 years and still using uTorrent 2.2.1 or older ? :lol:

And of course streaming is behind downloading .. When you download you can watch videos when ever you want even if your somewhere without internet , Some people also have slow internet they can download files faster than they can stream them and some people are capped were they only can download so much per month . So I doubt it will ever be as popular . I never even use popcorn time.. i don't trust it . ^_^